Question

Is there a way to make a keyboard disappear without resignFirstResponder? I have a UITextField, and I’d like it to be able to accept new text and still have the insertion point (flashing cursor) visible without the keyboard being on screen.

When I perform a [textField resignFirstResponder] I can still insert text, by appending to the textField.text, but I can’t see the insertion point anymore.

Is there a standard way to make the keyboard animate out, while having my textField remain first responder?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Found an answer to this question. It’s not standard though, and like Dave says, may be taboo for the app reviewers. Using the code from this page as a starting point:

http://unsolicitedfeedback.com/2009/02/06/how-to-customize-uikeyboard-by-adding-subviews/

I added in an animation block. You can dismiss the keyboards view with a standard looking animation, but whatever is first responder will retain that status. Really, the keyboard is just hidden off screen.

- (void)hideKeyboard 
{
  for (UIWindow *keyboardWindow in [[UIApplication sharedApplication] windows]) {

    // Now iterating over each subview of the available windows
    for (UIView *keyboard in [keyboardWindow subviews]) {

      // Check to see if the view we have referenced is UIKeyboard.
      // If so then we found the keyboard view that we were looking for.
      if([[keyboard description] hasPrefix:@"<UIKeyboard"] == YES) {

        // animate the keyboard moving
        CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
        [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:context];
        [UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveEaseInOut];
        [UIView setAnimationDuration:0.4];

        // remove the keyboard
        CGRect frame = keyboard.frame;
        // if (keyboard.frame.origin.x >= 0) {
        if (keyboard.frame.origin.y < 480) {
          // slide the keyboard onscreen
          //frame.origin.x = (keyboard.frame.origin.x - 320);

          // slide the keyboard onscreen
          frame.origin.y = (keyboard.frame.origin.y + 264);
          keyboard.frame = frame;
        }
        else {
          // slide the keyboard off to the side
          //frame.origin.x = (keyboard.frame.origin.x + 320);

          // slide the keyboard off
          frame.origin.y = (keyboard.frame.origin.y - 264);
          keyboard.frame = frame;
        }

        [UIView commitAnimations];
      }
    }
  }
}

I wrote in code to dismiss the keyboard to the left and to the bottom of the screen. I don’t know what will happen when you eventually resignFirstResponder, but it might be an idea to reset the keyboard frame when you do that.