How can I make the keyboard disappear?

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

If there is, then it's not documented in the iPhone API. Also, what you're asking for does not make sense. You want to have the insertion point in a UITextField. OK, great. But you also want the keyboard to go away? Then what's the point of the textfield having the focus? How are you going to input data into the textfield? If you want to have a custom keyboard, then just display it on top of the keyboard. I can't think of a good reason why you'd want the cursor to be visible but not have some sort of data entry mechanism. That would break UI convention and might even get your app rejected.

Answer 2

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.