Is there a documented way to set the iPhone orient

Question

I have an app where I would like to support device rotation in certain views but other don't particularly make sense in Landscape mode, so as I swapping the views out I would like to force the rotation to be set to portrait.

There is an undocumented property setter on UIDevice that does the trick but obviously generates a compiler warning and could disappear with a future revision of the SDK.

[[UIDevice currentDevice] setOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait];

Are there any documented ways to force the orientation?

Update: I thought I would provide an example as I am not looking for shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation as I have already implemented that.

I want my app to support landscape and portrait in View 1 but only portrait in View 2. I have already implemented shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation for all views but if the user is in landscape mode in View 1 and then switches to View 2, I want to force the phone to rotate back to Portrait.

Answer 1

From what I can tell, the setOrientation: method doesn't work (or perhaps works no longer). Here's what I'm doing to do this:

first, put this define at the top of your file, right under your #imports:

#define degreesToRadian(x) (M_PI * (x) / 180.0)

then, in the viewWillAppear: method

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES animated:NO];     
if (self.interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait) {  
    self.view.transform = CGAffineTransformIdentity;
    self.view.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(degreesToRadian(90));
    self.view.bounds = CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, 480, 320);
}

if you want that to be animated, then you can wrap the whole thing in an animation block, like so:

[UIView beginAnimations:@"View Flip" context:nil];
[UIView setAnimationDuration:1.25];
[UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveEaseInOut];

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES animated:NO];     
if (self.interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait) {  
    self.view.transform = CGAffineTransformIdentity;
    self.view.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(degreesToRadian(90));
    self.view.bounds = CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, 480, 320);
}
[UIView commitAnimations];

Then, in your portrait mode controller, you can do the reverse - check to see if its currently in landscape, and if so, rotate it back to Portrait.

Answer 2

I was having an issue where I had a UIViewController on the screen, in a UINavigationController, in landscape orientation. When the next view controller is pushed in the flow, however, I needed the device to return to portrait orientation.

What I noticed, was that the shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: method isn't called when a new view controller is pushed onto the stack, but it is called when a view controller is popped from the stack.

Taking advantage of this, I am using this snippet of code in one of my apps:

- (void)selectHostingAtIndex:(int)hostingIndex {

    self.transitioning = YES;

    UIViewController *garbageController = [[[UIViewController alloc] init] autorelease];
    [self.navigationController pushViewController:garbageController animated:NO];
    [self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:NO];

    BBHostingController *hostingController = [[BBHostingController alloc] init];
    hostingController.hosting = [self.hostings objectAtIndex:hostingIndex];
    [self.navigationController pushViewController:hostingController animated:YES];
    [hostingController release];

    self.transitioning = NO;
}

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientation {
    if (self.transitioning)
        return (toInterfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait);
    else
        return YES;
}

Basically, by creating an empty view controller, pushing it onto the stack, and immediately popping it off, it's possible to get the interface to revert to the portrait position. Once the controller has been popped, I just push on the controller that I intended to push in the first place. Visually, it looks great - the empty, arbitrary view controller is never seen by the user.

Answer 3

I found a solution and wrote something in french (but code are in english). here

The way is to add the controller to the window view (the controller must possess a good implementation of the shouldRotate.... function).

Answer 4

This is no longer an issue on the later iPhone 3.1.2 SDK. It now appears to honor the requested orientation of the view being pushed back onto the stack. That likely means that you would need to detect older iPhone OS versions and only apply the setOrientation when it is prior to the latest release.

It is not clear if Apple's static analysis will understand that you are working around the older SDK limitations. I personally have been told by Apple to remove the method call on my next update so I am not yet sure if having a hack for older devices will get through the approval process.

Answer 5

If you want to force it to rotate from portrait to landscape here is the code. Just note that you need adjust the center of your view. I noticed that mine didn't place the view in the right place. Otherwise, it worked perfectly. Thanks for the tip.

if(UIInterfaceOrientationIsLandscape(self.interfaceOrientation)){

        [UIView beginAnimations:@"View Flip" context:nil];
        [UIView setAnimationDuration:0.5f];
        [UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveEaseInOut];

        self.view.transform = CGAffineTransformIdentity;
        self.view.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(degreesToRadian(90));
        self.view.bounds = CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 480.0f, 320.0f);
        self.view.center = CGPointMake(160.0f, 240.0f);

        [UIView commitAnimations];
}

Answer 6

I have an app where I would like to support device rotation in certain views but other don't particularly make sense in Landscape mode, so as I swapping the views out I would like to force the rotation to be set to portrait.

I realise that the above original post in this thread is very old now, but I had a similar problem to it - ie. all of the screens in my App are portrait only, with the exception of one screen, which can be rotated between landscape and portrait by the user.

This was straightforward enough, but like other posts, I wanted the App to automatically return to portrait regardless of the current device orientation, when returning to the previous screen.

The solution I implemented was to hide the Navigation Bar while in landscape mode, meaning that the user can only return to previous screens whilst in portrait. Therefore, all other screens can only be in portrait.

- (void)didRotateFromInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)pInterfaceOrientation {
    BOOL lHideNavBar = self.interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait ? NO : YES;
    [self.navigationController setNavigationBarHidden:lHideNavBar animated:YES];
}

This also has the added benefit for my App in that there is more screen space available in landscape mode. This is useful because the screen in question is used to display PDF files.

Hope this helps.