Set padding for UITextField with UITextBorderStyle

Question

I wanted to use a custom background for my UITextFields. This works fine except for the fact that I have to use UITextBorderStyleNone to make it look pretty. This forces the text to stick to the left without any padding.

Can I set a padding manually so that it looks similar to UITextBorderStyleRoundedRect except for using my custom background image?

Answer 1

Here's how to achieve this in SWIFT

@IBOutlet weak var yourTextField: UITextField!

override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
let paddingView = UIView(frame: CGRectMake(0, 0, 10, self.yourTextField.frame.height))
yourTextField.leftView = paddingView
yourTextField.leftViewMode = UITextFieldViewMode.Always
}
}

Resource

Answer 2

Edit: Still works in iOS 11.3.1

In iOS 6 myTextField.leftView = paddingView; is causing issue

This solves the problem

myTextField.layer.sublayerTransform = CATransform3DMakeTranslation(5, 0, 0)

For right aligned text field use CATransform3DMakeTranslation(-5, 0, 0) as mention by latenitecoder in comments

Answer 3

Set padding for UITextField with UITextBorderStyleNone: Swift

Based on @Evil Trout's most voted answer I created a custom method in my ViewController class, like shown bellow:

- (void) modifyTextField:(UITextField *)textField
{
    UIView *paddingView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 5, 20)];
    textField.leftView = paddingView;
    textField.leftViewMode = UITextFieldViewModeAlways;
    textField.rightView = paddingView;
    textField.rightViewMode = UITextFieldViewModeAlways;

    [textField setBackgroundColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];
    [textField setTextColor:[UIColor blackColor]];
}

Now I can call that method inside (viewDidLoad method) and send any of my TextFields to that method and add padding for both right and left, and give text and background colors by writing just one line of code, as follows:

[self modifyTextField:self.firstNameTxtFld];

This Worked perfectly on iOS 7! I know that adding too much Views might make this a bit heavier class to be loaded. But when concerned about the difficulty in other solutions, I found myself more biased to this method and more flexible with using this way. ;)

Thanks for the Hack "Evil Trout"! (bow)

I thought I should update this answer's code snippet with Swift:

Since Swift allow us to write extensions for the existing classes, let's write it in that way.

extension UITextField {
    func addPaddingToTextField() {
        let paddingView: UIView = UIView.init(frame: CGRectMake(0, 0, 8, 20))
        self.leftView = paddingView;
        self.leftViewMode = .Always;
        self.rightView = paddingView;
        self.rightViewMode = .Always;


        self.backgroundColor = UIColor.whiteColor()
        self.textColor = UIColor.blackColor()
    }
}

Usage:

self.firstNameTxtFld.addPaddingToTextField()

Hope this would be helpful to somebody else out there!
Cheers!

Answer 4

you can use category. set padding to left and right

UITextField+Padding.h

@interface UITextField (Padding)
@property (nonatomic, assign) CGFloat paddingValue;
@property (nonatomic, assign) CGFloat leftPadding;
@property (nonatomic, assign) CGFloat rightPadding;

//overwrite
-(CGRect)textRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds;
-(CGRect)editingRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds;
@end

UITextField+Padding.m

#import "UITextField+Padding.h"
#import <objc/runtime.h>

static char TAG_LeftPaddingKey;
static char TAG_RightPaddingKey;
static char TAG_Left_RightPaddingKey;

@implementation UITextField (Padding)

#pragma clang diagnostic push
#pragma clang diagnostic ignored "-Wobjc-protocol-method-implementation"
-(CGRect)textRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {

CGFloat offset_Left=0;
CGFloat offset_Right=0;
if (self.paddingValue>0) {
    offset_Left=self.paddingValue;
    offset_Right=offset_Left;
}else{
    if (self.leftPadding>0){
        offset_Left=self.leftPadding;
    }
    if (self.rightPadding>0){
        offset_Right=self.rightPadding;
    }
}

if (offset_Left>0||offset_Right>0) {
    return CGRectMake(bounds.origin.x+ offset_Left ,bounds.origin.y ,
                      bounds.size.width- (offset_Left+offset_Right), bounds.size.height-2 );
 }else{
    return bounds;
 }
}



-(CGRect)editingRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
    return [self textRectForBounds:bounds];
}
#pragma clang diagnostic pop


#pragma maek -setter&&getter
- (CGFloat)paddingValue
{
    return [objc_getAssociatedObject(self,&TAG_Left_RightPaddingKey) floatValue];
}
-(void)setPaddingValue:(CGFloat)paddingValue
{
    objc_setAssociatedObject(self, &TAG_Left_RightPaddingKey, @(paddingValue), OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN_NONATOMIC);
}

-(CGFloat)leftPadding
{
    return [objc_getAssociatedObject(self,&TAG_LeftPaddingKey) floatValue];
}

-(void)setLeftPadding:(CGFloat)leftPadding
{
    objc_setAssociatedObject(self, &TAG_LeftPaddingKey, @(leftPadding), OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN_NONATOMIC);
}

-(CGFloat)rightPadding
{
    return [objc_getAssociatedObject(self,&TAG_RightPaddingKey) floatValue];
}

-(void)setRightPadding:(CGFloat)rightPadding
{
    objc_setAssociatedObject(self, &TAG_RightPaddingKey, @(rightPadding), OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN_NONATOMIC);
}

@end

you can set padding like this self.phoneNumTF.paddingValue=10.f; or self.phoneNumTF.leftPadding=10.f;

Answer 5

@Evil trout's answer is great. I have been using this approach for quite a some time now. The only thing it lacks is "dealing with numerous text fields". I tried other approaches but does not seem to work.

Subclassing UITextField just to add a padding didn't make any sense to me. So, I iterated over all UITextFields to add the padding.

-(void) addPaddingToAllTextFields:(UIView*)view {

    for(id currentView in [view subviews]){
        if([currentView isKindOfClass:[UITextField class]]) {
            // Change value of CGRectMake to fit ur need
            [currentView setLeftView:[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 10, 20)]];
            [currentView setLeftViewMode:UITextFieldViewModeAlways];
        }

        if([currentView respondsToSelector:@selector(subviews)]){
            [textfieldarray addObjectsFromArray:[self addPaddingToAllTextFields:currentView]];
        }
    }
}

Answer 6

You can't set padding. Instead have a UIView which has your background image and the UITextField inside of it. Set the UITextField width as UIViewWidth-(paddingSize x 2) and the height similarly and then set it at point paddingSize,paddingSize.