How do I change the title of the "back" button on a Navigation Bar

Question

Currently the left bar button default value is the title of the view that loaded the current one, in other words the view to be shown when the button is pressed (back button).

I want to change the text shown on the button to something else.

I tried putting the following line of code in the view controller's viewDidLoad method but it doesn't seem to work.

self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem.title = @"Log Out";

What should I do?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I edited this to provide the definitive answer:

This should be placed in the in the method that calls the ViewController titled "NewTitle". Right before the push or popViewController statement.

UIBarButtonItem *newBackButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle: @"NewTitle" style: UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered target: nil action: nil];

[[self navigationItem] setBackBarButtonItem: newBackButton];

[newBackButton release];

Answer 2

You actually want to be using the "backBarButtonItem" property.

And it behaves strangely. If you have ViewController "A", and ViewController "B", then when you navigate to "B", the back button says "A". If you want it to say "Previous" instead, you don't put the code inside B's ViewController. Instead, you put it inside A's controller. The self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem refers to the back button that would take you to this view controller (self).

So inside your "A" controller, you'd put:

self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem.title = @"Previous";

It's weird.

Answer 3

Here's another way to do it.

In your parent view controller, implement the following method:

- (void) setBackBarButtonItemTitle:(NSString *)newTitle {
  self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem.title = newTitle;
}

In your child view controller, when you want to change the title, this will work:

NSArray *viewControllerArray = [self.navigationController viewControllers];
int parentViewControllerIndex = [viewControllerArray count] - 2;
[[viewControllerArray objectAtIndex:parentViewControllerIndex] setBackBarButtonItemTitle:@"New Title"];

I was never able to get the parentViewController property to work:

[(ParentViewController *)(self.navigationController.parentViewController) setBackBarButtonItemTitle:@"New Title"];

I don't know if that's a bug or I'm not using it properly. But grabbing the second-to-last view controller in the viewControllers array points to the parent view controller, and I can call parent methods correctly with that reference.

Answer 4

Ok, here is the way. If you have a view controller "first" and you navigate another view controller "second" by pushing a button or etc. you need to do some work. First you need to create a BarButtonItem in "second" view controller's ViewDidLoad method like this;

    UIBarButtonItem *LOButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc]
              initWithTitle:@"Log Out" 
              style:UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered
              target:self
              action:@selector(lOut:)];
    self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = LOButton;
    [LOButton release];

After you do that, you need to write to code for "lOut" action in the same .m file like this;

-(IBAction)lOut:(id)sender

{

    [self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES];
    [self.navigationController pushViewController:self.navigationController.parentViewController animated:YES];

}

It's all.

Answer 5

I got the solution that puts a left bar button on the navigation bar to say log out. How do I make it be a back bar button???

Answer 6

Maybe I'm being over simplistic but From Apple's documentation the wording is:

If a custom bar button item is not specified by either of the view controllers, a default back button is used and its title is set to the value of the title property of the previous view controller—that is, the view controller one level down on the stack.

The solution marked correct above sets a default button item from the parent controller. It's the right answer, but what I'm doing is simply changing the self.title property right before pushing the new controller onto the NavigationController stack.

This seems to update the back button's title on the next controller.

As long as you set the title back to what it should be in viewWillDisplay I can't see this causing any problems...

thoughts?

Answer 7

This last post from Jessedc is simple and works a treat to control the title of BACK navigation item, cheers, very simple.