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iOS

Posted by Donald Test
Donald Test
3,339 Points

Custom Control

Hello,

So, I am working on building a custom control. I basically want to allow allow the application to generate rectangles (positioned at x = 0 with a variable y value that increases as each rectangle is added.) I would like them to respond to gestures where they have two positions (closed - which mostly hidden, open - expanded fully so that the entire rectangle is still visible but tethered to the side). I have already designed an application with this in mind. However, I do not know if using core graphics would be best or just the images that I have. If anyone can offer any advice that would be great. Thanks!

1 Answer

Patrick Cooney
Patrick Cooney
12,216 Points
Patrick Cooney
Patrick Cooney
12,216 Points

If you are going to have the rectangles animate I would highly recommend you use core graphics. Otherwise you'll end up having to render out several frames of the rectangle animating and set them as an image sequence like in the crystal ball app. There are even apps that will allow you to draw the shapes and it will generate code for you. Google PaintCode2, BezierCode and there is one other one that I can't remember.

Donald Test
Donald Test
3,339 Points

Hey, thanks for the reply. Yeah, I have been tinkering around, using PaintCode2. I was wondering if it would be better to use CAShapeLayer. Since, I need the rectangle size to respond to a gesture recognizer, CAShapeLayer was suggested to me. However, I am having difficulty implementing the two in Xcode. I can draw a shape with CAShapeLayer, but having a seamless transition from being 1/3 the size to the full rectangle upon swiping is not something I'm finding easily in the documentation. I figured that I may have to animate it So, I am going to play around with that. My knowledge of CoreGraphics is lacking somewhat, so I am working on that now.

Patrick Cooney
Patrick Cooney
12,216 Points

If you're doing that I think all you need to do is setup the animation code inside a method and then setup your gesture recognizer and pass in that method as the selector. If you already have some code you're working with that's not doing what you expect and you want me to take a look let me know. Otherwise you can checkout this file that's part of one of my projects. There are 2 gesture recognizers in there and as you can see I have methods that hold all the logic and they just get called when that gesture is performed.