UIView drawRect vs initWithFrame

Question

I have a UIView which has several buttons added to it as subviews. Currently I have the buttons in drawRect:, which I have heard is a bad idea because drawRect can be called several times. I tried to move these UIButtons to initWithFrame, but they just don't get drawn. How should I fix this?

I am not using interface builder, so there are no NIB files present. The initWithFrame is called. I checked by adding an NSLog(...), and my NSMutableArrays are being properly initialized.

My initWitFrame: code currently has very little. It is

- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame 
{
    if (self = [super initWithFrame:frame]) 
    {
        results = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
        inputs = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
        format = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
        [format setDateFormat:@"EEE, MMM dd, yyyy"];
        renc =[[RenameController alloc] init];
    }
    return self;
}

I have tried to add a textlabel like the following

#define BOX_WIDTH 155.0
#define BOX_OFFSET 45.00
#define ROW_HEIGHT 27

- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame 
{
    if (self = [super initWithFrame:frame]) 
    {
        results = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
        inputs = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
        format = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
        [format setDateFormat:@"EEE, MMM dd, yyyy"];
        renc =[[RenameController alloc] init];

        double row=0.0;
        [self makelabel:@"Start" at:CGRectMake(0, row, BOX_OFFSET, ROW_HEIGHT)];
    }
    return self;
}

-(void) makelabel:(NSString *) str at:(CGRect) rect
{
    UILabel *title = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:rect];
    title.text = str;
    title.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentLeft;
    title.textColor = [UIColor blackColor];
    title.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
    title.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:FONT_SIZE];
    [self addSubview:title];
    [title release];
}

Answer 1

I bet the view is loaded from a nib file? Just use the same code to add your subviews in initWithCoder:

UIView Class Reference:

If you use Interface Builder to design your interface, this method is not called when your view objects are subsequently loaded from the nib file. Objects in a nib file are reconstituted and then initialized using their initWithCoder: method, which modifies the attributes of the view to match the attributes stored in the nib file. For detailed information about how views are loaded from a nib file, see Resource Programming Guide.

Answer 2

@tonklon is spot on. Additionally, the usual pattern is to have your custom initialization code in a third method, such as -sharedInit, which is called after the appropriate super initializer:

- (id)sharedInit {
    // do whatever, possibly releasing self on error and returning nil
    return self;
}

- (id)initWithFrame: (CGRect)frame {
    self = [super initWithFrame: frame];
    if (self) {
        self = [self sharedInit];
    }
    return self;
}

- (id)initWithCoder: (NSCoder *)aDecoder {
    self = [super initWithDecoder: aDecoder];
    if (self) {
        self = [self sharedInit];
    }
    return self;
}