What works to pass touches through to (and display all) subviews?

Answer 1

The way I'm reading your question, you want to intercept the events to trigger some action (animate toolbar, post notification), while allowing the event to also reach its natural destination.

If I were trying to do this, I would put the UIToolbar directly as a subview of the UIViewController.view. The UIWebView remains a direct subview also.

The UIViewController.view should be a subclass of UIView, and it needs to override

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event

The view can side-step being part of the event processing by sending back the view that you want to receive the event (UIToolbar or UIWebView), while you still get a chance to trigger the actions you want.

An example might be:

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint) point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    UIView* subview = [super hitTest:point withEvent:event];
    /* Use the event.type, subview to decide what actions to perform */
    // Optionally nominate a default event recipient if your view is not completely covered by subviews
    if (subview == self) return self.webViewOutlet;
    return subview;
}

Answer 2

If you start by adding the UIView subclass to the view controller's view, then add the UIWebView as you describe, the UIWebView is going to completely cover the UIView subclass (assuming both views are completely overlapping as you mention in the question comments).

It sounds like you don't want that - you want the subclass above the web view. You need to either add them to the view controller's view in the opposite order (add web view, then add custom UIView) or call:

[viewContoller.view insertSubview:webView belowSubview:subclass];

With that out of the way, let's talk about how to intercept the touch events. I'm going to suggest a different approach that allowed me to do something kind of similar. Here's the question and answer I created for it - feel free to look there for more details on this technique.

The idea is that you subclass UIApplication and override the -sendEvent: method. Yours will look something like this, I suppose:

- (void)sendEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    [super sendEvent:event];

    NSSet *allTouches = [event allTouches];
    if ([allTouches count] > 0) {
        UITouch *touch = [allTouches anyObject];
        if ([allTouches count] == 1 && touch.phase == UITouchPhaseEnded && touch.tapCount == 1) {
            // Do something here
        }
    }
}

I don't expect this will get you 100% there, but hopefully it's a start. In particular, you may want to play around with the if condition that checks the properties of the UITouches you're dealing with. I'm not sure if I'm including the right checks or if they'll catch the exact condition you're looking for.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Okay, what about this:

-In your custom UIView subclass, add a pointer to your UIWebView

-Add an ivar to the UIView subclass, BOOL hasMoved;

-In the UIView subclass, override the touch methods like this:

-(void) touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    hasMoved = NO;
    [webView touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event];
}

-(void) touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    hasMoved = YES;
    [webView touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event];
}

-(void) touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if(!hasMoved) [self hideToolbar];
    [webView touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
}

And then put the custom view on top of the web view. Seems too simple, and it probably is -- some magic may be required to handle multiple touches correctly, and you may need to use a NSTimer in the touchesBegan: method to as delay to handle double tap situations, but I think the general idea is sound...perhaps?

Answer 4

Take 2: same as above, but override the methods as follows:

-(void) touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    hasMoved = NO;
    [[[webView subviews] objectAtIndex:0] touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event];
}

-(void) touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    hasMoved = YES;
    [[[webView subviews] objectAtIndex:0] touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event];
}

-(void) touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if(!hasMoved) [self toggleToolbar];
    [[[webView subviews] objectAtIndex:0] touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
}

-(void) touchesCancelled:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    [[[webView subviews] objectAtIndex:0] touchesCancelled:touches withEvent:event];
}

This works...sort of. This allows you to drag the web view around. But it isn't handling other touch events properly (following links, pinching, anything). So. Probably not very useful, but it was progress to me!