How do you make an UIPickerView component wrap around ?

Question

I would like to show a set of consecutive numbers in a UIPickerView component but have it wrap around like the seconds component of the Clock->Timer application. The only behavior I can enable looks like the hours component of the Timer application, where you can scroll in only one direction.

Answer 1

I found my answer here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=6120638&highlight=UIPickerView#post6120638

here is an exerpt:

When it asks for the title of a row, give it:
Code:

return [rows objectAtIndex:(row % [rows count])];

When it says the user didSelectRow:inComponent:, use something like this:
Code:

//we want the selection to always be in the SECOND set (so that it looks like it has stuff before and after)
if (row < [rows count] || row >= (2 * [rows count]) ) {
    row = row % [rows count];
    row += [rows count];
    [pickerView selectRow:row inComponent:component animated:NO];
}

It appears that the UIPickerView does not support wrapping around natively, but you can fool it by inserting more sets of data to be displayed and when the picker stops, centering the component to the middle of the data set.

Answer 2

It's just as easy to set the number of rows to a large number, and make it start at a high value, there's little chance that the user will ever scroll the wheel for a very long time -- And even then, the worse that will happen is that they'll hit the bottom.

- (NSInteger)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView numberOfRowsInComponent:(NSInteger)component {
    // Near-infinite number of rows.
    return NSIntegerMax;
}

- (NSString *)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView titleForRow:(NSInteger)row forComponent:(NSInteger)component {
    // Row n is same as row (n modulo numberItems).
    return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", row % numberItems];
}

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];

    self.pickerView = [[[UIPickerView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease];
    // ...set pickerView properties... Look at Apple's UICatalog sample code for a good example.
    // Set current row to a large value (adjusted to current value if needed).
    [pickerView selectRow:currentValue+100000 inComponent:0 animated:NO];
    [self.view addSubview:pickerView];
}

- (void)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView didSelectRow:(NSInteger)row inComponent:(NSInteger)component {
    NSInteger actualRow = row % numberItems;
    // ...
}