Question

I’m using a UILabel as a custom view for my UIPickerView, and I’m trying to pad the label in from the left by 10px or so. However, no matter what frame I set the UILabel to, it gets ignored.

I’m basically trying to make a datepicker, with an “unknown” option in the year component. I’m a bit of a newbie to iOS dev. Is it possible/ would it be more elegant to subclass UIDatePicker and add the “unknown” option?

Here’s my code:

- (UIView *)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView viewForRow:(NSInteger)row forComponent:(NSInteger)component reusingView:(UIView *)view
{
    UILabel* tView = (UILabel*)view;

    if (!tView)
    {
        tView = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:** Any CGRect here **];

        tView.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];
        tView.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:16.0];

        if (component == 0)
        {
            tView.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;
        }
    }

    // Set the title
    NSString *rowTitle;

    if (component == 0)
    {
        rowTitle = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", (row + 1)];
    }
    else if (component == 1)
    {
        NSArray *months = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"January", @"February", @"March", @"April", @"May", @"June", @"July", @"August", @"September", @"October", @"November", @"December", nil];
        rowTitle = (NSString *) [months objectAtIndex:row];
    }
    else if (component == 2)
    {
        if (row == 0)
        {
            rowTitle = @"- Unknown -";
        }
        else
        {
            NSDateFormatter *currentYearFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
            currentYearFormat.dateFormat = @"YYYY";
            NSInteger currentYear = [[currentYearFormat stringFromDate:[NSDate date]] intValue];

            rowTitle = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", (currentYear - row)];
        }
    }

    tView.text = rowTitle;

    return tView;
}

Thanks!

Answer 1

Don’t use UILabel directly. The simplest way for you is to …

Define width/height via …

• pickerView:widthForComponent:
• pickerView:rowHeightForComponent:

… than create custom class based on UIView and return this object. In your custom UIView, add UILabel subview and move UILabel in layoutSubviews of your class. Something like this …

// MyPickerView.h
@interface MyPickerView : UIView
  @property (nonatomic,strong,readonly) UILabel *label;
@end

// MyPickerView.m
@interface MyPickerView()
  @property (nonatomic,strong) UILabel *label;
@end

@implementation MyPickerView
  - (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame {
    self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
    if ( self ) {
      _label = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero];
    }
    return self;
  }

  - (void)layoutSubviews {
    CGRect frame = self.bounds;
    frame.origin.x += 10.0f;
    frame.size.width -= 20.0f;
    _label.frame = frame;
  }
@end

… and return your MyPickerView in pickerView:viewForRow:forComponent:reusingView:.