I want to be able to add new views to a superview but so that they keep a constant vertical distance between each other. For that I tried to programmatically set up a constraint for each view but I could not figure out how to do it. The problem is I do not know beforehand the number or the relative position of the views.
Is there a way to programmaically set up a constraint for each view so that regardless of whatever other views they neighbor, autolayout will keep the constant spacing between the views?
Possible this short code snippet is what you are looking for:
NSMutableArray* newVerticalConstraints = [NSMutableArray array];
UIView* firstView = nil;
UIView* secondView = nil;
UIView* superview = <Your container view>;
NSArray* subviews = [superview subviews];
if ([subviews count] > 0) {
firstView = [subviews objectAtIndex:0];
// Add first constraint
[newVerticalConstraints addObjectsFromArray:[NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:@"V:|-10-[firstView]" options:0 metrics:nil views:NSDictionaryOfVariableBindings(firstView)]];
for (int i = 1; i < [subviews count]; i++) {
secondView = [subviews objectAtIndex:i];
[newVerticalConstraints addObjectsFromArray:[NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:@"V:[firstView]-10-[secondView]" options:0 metrics:nil views:NSDictionaryOfVariableBindings(firstView,secondView)]];
firstView = secondView;
}
// Add last constraint
[newVerticalConstraints addObjectsFromArray:[NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:@"V:[firstView]-10-|" options:0 metrics:nil views:NSDictionaryOfVariableBindings(firstView)]];
[superview removeConstraints:self.verticalConstraints];
[superview addConstraints:newVerticalConstraints];
// Save all vertical constraints to be able to remove them
self.verticalConstraints = newVerticalConstraints;
}