Handling Touch Event in UILabel and hooking it up to an IBAction

Question

Ok, so I have a UILabel created in interface builder that displays some some default text of "tap to begin". When the user taps the UILabel I want it to trigger an IBAction method: -(IBAction)next; which updates the text on the label to say something new. It would be really convenient if this allowed me to simply drag a connection from my method to my label and then select touch up inside, as with a button. but alas, no cigar. so anyways, I guess my quesion is, am i going to have to subclass UILabel to get this to work? Or is there some way I can drag a button over the label, but make it 0% opaque. Or is there a simpler solution I'm missing.

Answer 1

UILabel inherits from UIView which inherits from UIResponder. All UIresponder objects can handle touch events. So in your class file which knows about your view (which contains the UIlabel) implement:

-(void)touchesBegan:(NSSet*)touches withEvent:(UIEvent*)event;

In interface builder set the UILabel's tag value. when touches occur in your touchesBegan method, check the tag value of the view to which the tag belongs:

UITouch *touch = [touches anyobject];

if(touch.view.tag == MY_TAG_VAL)
label.text = @"new text";

You connect your code in your class file with the UILabel object in interface builder by declaring your UILabel instance variable with the IBOutlet prefix:

IBOutlet UILabel *label;

Then in interface builder you can connect them up.

Answer 2

You can use a UIButton, make it transparent, i.e. custom type without an image, and add a UILabel on it (centered). Then wire up the normal button events.