iphone keyboard without textview

Question

is it possible to bring up the keyboard in an iphone app without a textview? or will i have to have an invisible textview?

if so, how do you programatically create a textview and then bring up the keyboard (without the user having to tap the textview)? the only examples i can find use interface builder..

Answer 1

The only (valid) way to show the keyboard is to have a textfield that is first responder. You can hide it and make it first responder programmatically by calling becomeFirstResponder on the hidden textfield.

You can create a UITextView programmatically by doing something like this (assume aRect and view exist)

var textView = [[[UITextView alloc] initWithFrame:aRect] autorelease];
[view addSubview:textView];

[textView becomeFirstResponder];

Answer 2

The way this stuff works is via the NSNotificationCenter publish/subscribe model. First you need to use addObserver:selector:name:object:, then you can try doing this:

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotification:[NSNotification notificationWithName:NSTextDidBeginEditingNotification object:self]];

But I'm not sure what notifications you would get, or would need to register for, to get the keyboard typing character values. Good luck and happy hacking :)

Answer 3

After some more digging, I found this. It's unofficial, but I bet it works.

UIKeyboard *keyboard = [[[UIKeyboard alloc] initWithFrame: CGRectMake(0.0f, contentRect.size.height - 216.0f, contentRect.size.width, 216.0f)] autorelease];
        [keyboard setReturnKeyEnabled:NO];
        [keyboard setTapDelegate:editingTextView];
        [inputView addSubview:keyboard];