How to disable UITextField editing but still accep

Question

I'm making a UITextField that has a UIPickerView as inputView. Its all good, except that I can edit by copy, paste, cut and select text, and I don't want it. Only the Picker should modify text field.

I've learned that I can disable editing by setting setEnabled or setUserInteractionEnabled to NO. Ok, but the TextField stop responding to touching and the picker don't show up.

What can I do to achieve it?

Answer 1

Using the textfield delegate, there's a method

- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string

Return NO from this, and any attempt by the user to edit the text will be rejected.

That way you can leave the field enabled but still prevent people pasting text into it.

Answer 2

For an alternative that handles the UIPickerView and Action Sheets, checkout ActionSheetPicker

https://github.com/TimCinel/ActionSheetPicker

It's cocoapods enabled. It handles all of the cancel and done buttons on the Action Sheet. The examples within the sample project are great. I choose the ActionSheetStringPicker, which handles easily just String based options, but the API can handle most anything that I can think of.

I originally started a solution much like the checkmarked answer, but stumbled onto this project and took me roughly 20 minutes to get things integrated into my app for usage including using cocopods: ActionSheetPicker (~> 0.0)

Hope this helps.

Download the git project and look at the following classes:

• ActionSheetPickerViewController.m
• ActionSheetPickerCustomPickerDelegate.h

Here is roughly most of the code that I added, plus the *.h imports.

- (IBAction)gymTouched:(id)sender {
      NSLog(@"gym touched");

      [ActionSheetStringPicker showPickerWithTitle:@"Select a Gym" rows:self.locations initialSelection:self.selectedIndex target:self successAction:@selector(gymWasSelected:element:) cancelAction:@selector(actionPickerCancelled:) origin:sender];
 }


- (void)actionPickerCancelled:(id)sender {
    NSLog(@"Delegate has been informed that ActionSheetPicker was cancelled");
}


- (void)gymWasSelected:(NSNumber *)selectedIndex element:(id)element {
    self.selectedIndex = [selectedIndex intValue];

    //may have originated from textField or barButtonItem, use an IBOutlet instead of element
    self.txtGym.text = [self.locations objectAtIndex:self.selectedIndex];
}


-(BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
    return NO;  // Hide both keyboard and blinking cursor.
}

Answer 3

This worked for me [textview setEditable:NO]; The above answers are overcomplicating the situation.

Answer 4

It would be more elegant to create a custom subclass of UITextField that returns NO for all calls to canPerformAction:withSender: (or at least where action is @selector(cut) or @selector(paste)), as described here.

In addition, I'd also implement - (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string as per Nick's suggestion in order to disable inputting text from Bluetooth keyboards.

Answer 5

Make your inputView be presented by an hidden textfield which also change the text of the presented and disabled one.

Answer 6

To prevent editing of UITextField while using UIPickerView for selecting values(in Swift):

self.txtTransDate = self.makeTextField(self.transDate, placeHolder: "Specify Date")
self.txtTransDate?.addTarget(self, action: "txtTransDateEditing:", forControlEvents: UIControlEvents.EditingDidBegin)

func makeTextField(text: String?, placeHolder: String) -> UITextField {
    var textField = UITextField(frame: CGRect(x: 140, y: 0, width: 220.00, height: 40.00));
    textField.placeholder = placeHolder
    textField.text = text
    textField.borderStyle = UITextBorderStyle.Line
    textField.secureTextEntry = false;
    textField.delegate = self
    return textField
}


func txtTransDateEditing(sender: UITextField) {
    var datePickerView:UIDatePicker = UIDatePicker()
    datePickerView.datePickerMode = UIDatePickerMode.Date
    sender.inputView = datePickerView
    datePickerView.addTarget(self, action: Selector("datePickerValueChanged:"), forControlEvents: UIControlEvents.ValueChanged)
}

func datePickerValueChanged(sender: UIDatePicker) {
    var dateformatter = NSDateFormatter()
    dateformatter.dateStyle = NSDateFormatterStyle.MediumStyle
    self.txtTransDate!.text = dateformatter.stringFromDate(sender.date)
}

func textField(textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersInRange range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool  {
    self.resignFirstResponder()
    return false
}