Adding a cancel button to UITextField keyboard

Question

Is there a way to add a cancel button to the keyboard displayed for UITextField? Looking over the UITextInputTraits Protocol Reference, I could not find anything, including trying out the different keyboard types.

Answer 1

You can create a input accessory view which can display a UIToolBar Above the keyboard and then add a cancel button to this. Take a look at the documentation link below for the inputAccessoryView property.

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UITextField_Class/Reference/UITextField.html

This is an example of one I did for a TextView. The create Input Accessory View method is called from "textViewDidBeginEditing". Then it creates the input accessory view and in my case adds three buttons and a space bar.

I hope that helps.

-(void)textViewDidBeginEditing:(UITextView *)textView {

[self createInputAccessoryView];
[textView setInputAccessoryView:_inputAccessoryView];
self.myTextView = textView;  }

-(void)createInputAccessoryView {

_inputAccessoryView = [[UIToolbar alloc] init];
_inputAccessoryView.barStyle = UIBarStyleBlackOpaque;
[_inputAccessoryView sizeToFit];

_inputAccessoryView.frame = CGRectMake(0,_collageView.frame.size.height - 44, _collageView.frame.size.width, 44);

UIBarButtonItem *fontItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Font"
                                                             style:UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered
                                                            target:self action:@selector(changeFont:)];
UIBarButtonItem *removeItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Remove"
                                                             style:UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered
                                                            target:self action:@selector(removeTextView:)];
//Use this to put space in between your toolbox buttons
UIBarButtonItem *flexItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemFlexibleSpace
                                                                          target:nil
                                                                          action:nil];
UIBarButtonItem *doneItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Done"
                                                             style:UIBarButtonItemStyleDone
                                                            target:self action:@selector(dismissKeyBoard:)];

NSArray *items = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:fontItem,removeItem,flexItem,doneItem, nil];
[_inputAccessoryView setItems:items animated:YES];
[_myTextView addSubview:_inputAccessoryView];
}

Answer 2

I just dropped a UIToolbar into my view controller in Interface Builder, then:

@property IBOutlet UIToolbar *keyboardAccessory;

-(void) viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewWillAppear:animated];
    // this is so I can edit it in Interface Builder, but it doesn't show in the view
    [keyboardAccessory removeFromSuperview];
}

-(BOOL) textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField*)textField {
    textField.inputAccessoryView = keyboardAccessory;
    return YES;
}

-(IBAction) pressedCancelButton {
    [self.view endEditing:YES];
}

Voila!