Cancel out of UISearchBar when user taps on view

Question

Does anyone know how to cancel (resign First Responder) out of a UISearchBar when you tap below the search text box and above the keyboard? Can anyone help post some code to handle this?

Thanks

Answer 1

First, you need a reference to the search bar. Let's assume that your controller object has an object reference UISearchBar *theSearchBar, and that you assign it when you create the UISearchBar object.

Next, you need to detect that the containing view has been touched. The view that is touched "knows", but you need get that information to the controller. Sadly, Apple didn't provide a simple way to do this, but it's not that hard either.

My solution is to replace the standard UIView that a UIViewController object normally creates with a UIControl, and then make the UIViewController respond to touch events.

MainController.m

- (void) loadView {
    UIControl *control = [[UIControl alloc] initWithFrame: <desired frame>];
[control addTarget: self action: @selector(touchUpInside) 
             forControlEvents: UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
       // or touch down events, or whatever you like
    self.view = control;
    [control release];
}

- (void) viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    theSearchBar = [[UISearchBar alloc] initWithFrame: <desired frame>];

    // insert code to finish customizing the search bar

    [self.view addSubview: theSearchBar];
}

- (void) touchUpInside {
    if [theSearchBar isFirstResponder] {
        // grab any data you need from the search bar
        [theSearchBar resignFirstResponder];
    }
}

MainController.h

@interface MainController : UIViewController
{
    UISearchBar *theSearchBar;
}

Clarification:

There is only a single object -- let's call the class MainController -- which is a subclass of UIViewController. All of the methods listed above are implemented in MainController. theSearchBar is declared as a UISearchBar* in the .h file.

Are you defining your view and controller using Interface Builder? If so, I suggest you learn how to NOT use it -- once you get into the kind of tricks we are discussing here, it becomes more of a hindrance than a help -- I don't use it at all, ever.

Answer 2

An alternative idea I got from iphonedevbook, sample code project 04, was to use one big transparent button that lies behind all other controls which does nothing but resign all first responders if tapped. I.e. if the user taps anywhere where there isn't a more important control - which is the intuitive behavior - the search bar and keyboard disappear.