Programmatically create a UIView with color gradie

Question

I'm trying to generate a view with a gradient color background (A solid color to transparent) at runtime. Is there a way of doing that?

Answer 1

My solution is to create UIView subclass with CAGradientLayer accessible as a readonly property. This will allow you to customize your gradient how you want and you don't need to handle layout changes yourself. Subclass implementation:

@interface GradientView : UIView

@property (nonatomic, readonly) CAGradientLayer *gradientLayer;

@end

@implementation GradientView

+ (Class)layerClass
{
    return [CAGradientLayer class];
}

- (CAGradientLayer *)gradientLayer
{
    return (CAGradientLayer *)self.layer;
}

@end

Usage:

self.iconBackground = [GradientView new];
[self.background addSubview:self.iconBackground];
self.iconBackground.gradientLayer.colors = @[(id)[UIColor blackColor].CGColor, (id)[UIColor whiteColor].CGColor];
self.iconBackground.gradientLayer.startPoint = CGPointMake(1.0f, 1.0f);
self.iconBackground.gradientLayer.endPoint = CGPointMake(0.0f, 0.0f);