Finding the direction of scrolling in a UIScrollVi

Question

I have a UIScrollView with only horizontal scrolling allowed, and I would like to know which direction (left, right) the user scrolls. What I did was to subclass the UIScrollView and override the touchesMoved method:

- (void)touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
    [super touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event];

    UITouch *touch = [touches anyObject];
    float now = [touch locationInView:self].x;
    float before = [touch previousLocationInView:self].x;
    NSLog(@"%f %f", before, now);
    if (now > before){
        right = NO;
        NSLog(@"LEFT");
    }
    else{
        right = YES;
        NSLog(@"RIGHT");

    }

}

But this method sometimes doesn't get called at all when I move. What do you think?

Answer 1

- (void)scrollViewWillEndDragging:(UIScrollView *)scrollView withVelocity:(CGPoint)velocity targetContentOffset:(inout CGPoint *)targetContentOffset {

    CGPoint targetPoint = *targetContentOffset;
    CGPoint currentPoint = scrollView.contentOffset;

    if (targetPoint.y > currentPoint.y) {
        NSLog(@"up");
    }
    else {
        NSLog(@"down");
    }
}

Answer 2

Swift 2.2 Simple solution which tracks single and multiple directions without any loss.

  // Keep last location with parameter
  var lastLocation:CGPoint = CGPointZero

  // We are using only this function so, we can
  // track each scroll without lose anyone
  override func scrollViewWillBeginDragging(scrollView: UIScrollView) {
    let currentLocation = scrollView.contentOffset

    // Add each direction string
    var directionList:[String] = []

    if lastLocation.x < currentLocation.x {
      //print("right")
      directionList.append("Right")
    } else if lastLocation.x > currentLocation.x {
      //print("left")
      directionList.append("Left")
    }

    // there is no "else if" to track both vertical
    // and horizontal direction
    if lastLocation.y < currentLocation.y {
      //print("up")
      directionList.append("Up")
    } else if lastLocation.y > currentLocation.y {
      //print("down")
      directionList.append("Down")
    }

    // scrolled to single direction
    if directionList.count == 1 {
      print("scrolled to \(directionList[0]) direction.")
    } else if directionList.count > 0  { // scrolled to multiple direction
      print("scrolled to \(directionList[0])-\(directionList[1]) direction.")
    }

    // Update last location after check current otherwise,
    // values will be same
    lastLocation = scrollView.contentOffset
  }

Answer 3

Short & Easy would be, just check the velocity value, if its greater than zero then its scrolling left else right:

func scrollViewWillEndDragging(scrollView: UIScrollView, withVelocity velocity: CGPoint, targetContentOffset: UnsafeMutablePointer<CGPoint>) {

    var targetOffset = Float(targetContentOffset.memory.x)
    println("TargetOffset: \(targetOffset)")
    println(velocity)

    if velocity.x < 0 {
        scrollDirection = -1 //scrolling left
    } else {
        scrollDirection = 1 //scrolling right
    }
}