How can I get notified when a UIView becomes visib

Question

Is there a way to get a notification, a callback or some other means to call a method whenever a UIView becomes visible for the user, i.e. when a UIScrollview is the superview of some UIViews, and the ViewController of such a UIView shall get notified when its view is now visible to the user?

I am aware of the possible, but not so elegant solution of checking to which position the ScrollView scrolled (via UIScrollViewDelegate-methods) and compute if either one of the subviews is visible...
But I'm looking for a more universal way of doing this.

Answer 1

If your view is exhibiting behavior, it should be within a view controller. On a view controller, the viewDidAppear method will be called each time the view appears.

- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated

Answer 2

view's layer property should tell us if that view is visible or not

[view.layer visibleRect];

but this isnt working for me.

So work around could be to use UiScrollView contentOffset property to calculate if particular view is visible or not.

Answer 3

I don't think there's a universal way to do this for views. Sounds like you're stuck with scrollViewDidEndScrolling and other ScrollViewDelegate methods. But I'm not sure why you say it's elegant, they're quite straightforward.

Answer 4

I've managed to solve the problem this way:

First, add a category for UIView with the following method:

// retrieve an array containing all super views

-(NSArray *)getAllSuperviews
{
    NSMutableArray *superviews = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

    if(self.superview == nil) return nil;

    [superviews addObject:self.superview];
    [superviews addObjectsFromArray:[self.superview getAllSuperviews]];

    return superviews;
}

Then, in your View, check if the window-property is set:

-(void)didMoveToWindow
{
    if(self.window != nil)
        [self observeSuperviewsOnOffsetChange];
    else
        [self removeAsSuperviewObserver];
}

If it is set, we'll observe the "contentOffset" of each superview on any change. If the window is nil, we'll stop observing. You can change the keyPath to any other property, maybe "frame" if there is no UIScrollView in your superviews:

-(void)observeSuperviewsOnOffsetChange
{
    NSArray *superviews = [self getAllSuperviews];
    for (UIView *superview in superviews)
    {
        if([superview respondsToSelector:@selector(contentOffset)])
            [superview addObserver:self forKeyPath:@"contentOffset" options:NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew context:nil];
    }
}

-(void)removeAsSuperviewObserver
{
    NSArray *superviews = [self getAllSuperviews];
    for (UIView *superview in superviews)
    {
        @try
        {
            [superview removeObserver:self forKeyPath:@"contentOffset"];
        }
        @catch(id exception) { }
    }
}

Now implement the "observeValueForKeyPath"-method:

-(void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath ofObject:(id)object change:(NSDictionary *)change context:(void *)context
{
    if([keyPath isEqualToString:@"contentOffset"])
    {
        [self checkIfFrameIsVisible];
    }
}

Finally, check if the view's frame is visible inside the window's frame:

-(void)checkIfFrameIsVisible
{
    CGRect myFrameToWindow = [self.window convertRect:self.frame fromView:self];
    if(myFrameToWindow.size.width == 0 || myFrameToWindow.size.height == 0) return;
    if(CGRectContainsRect(self.window.frame, myFrameToWindow))
    {
        // We are visible, do stuff now
    }
}