Animating Constraint Changes, position animates but height jumps without animation

Question

I have a custom UIView. Within that UIView I have a UILabel with a yellow background containing @"8" called labelWhite. I programmatically create 4 constraints for that UILabel: top, left, width, and height.

When I tap the UIView, I change the constant value of the height and animate the layout over 5 seconds. However, the height of the view immediately jumps to the new value, but the y position also changes and jumps to a new value immediately. Then over the 5 second animation, the y position animates back to where it should have stayed all along.

You can see a video of it happening here: http://inadaydevelopment.com/stackoverflow/Constraints0.mov

What it SHOULD do is just remain at y=0 and shrink vertically. What am I doing wrong?

---

EDIT:

I just discovered that my animations work exactly as intended if my subviews are UIViews, but as UILabels I get the jump-size + animate-position.

What is going on? Is there a way I can get UILabels to animate their size?

---

This is the code I use to modify and animate the layout:

self.constraintWhiteHeight.constant = secondaryHeight;

[UIView animateWithDuration:5.0 animations:^{
    [self layoutIfNeeded];
}];

This is the code I use to create the constraints:

// ------ Top -----
NSLayoutConstraint *constraint = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:self
                                                              attribute:NSLayoutAttributeTop
                                                              relatedBy:NSLayoutRelationEqual
                                                                 toItem:self.labelWhite
                                                              attribute:NSLayoutAttributeTop
                                                             multiplier:1.0
                                                               constant:0];
[self addConstraint:constraint];

// ------ Left -----
self.constraintWhiteLeft = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:self
                                                        attribute:NSLayoutAttributeLeft
                                                        relatedBy:NSLayoutRelationEqual
                                                           toItem:self.labelWhite
                                                        attribute:NSLayoutAttributeLeft
                                                       multiplier:1.0
                                                         constant:0];

// ------ Width -----
NSString *constraintString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"H:[_labelWhite(==%.0f)]", self.bounds.size.width];
NSArray *constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:constraintString
                                                               options:0
                                                               metrics:nil
                                                                 views:NSDictionaryOfVariableBindings(_labelWhite)];
NSLog(@"constraints: %@", constraints);
self.constraintWhiteWidth = [constraints objectAtIndex:0];
[self.labelWhite addConstraints:constraints];

// ------ Height -----
constraintString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"V:[_labelWhite(==%.0f)]", primaryHeight];
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:constraintString
                                                      options:0
                                                      metrics:nil
                                                        views:NSDictionaryOfVariableBindings(_labelWhite)];
self.constraintWhiteHeight = [constraints objectAtIndex:0];
[self.labelWhite addConstraints:constraints];

Answer 1

I don't think you're doing anything wrong, this seems to be the way that labels behave when you try to animate their height. I know I've wrestled with this problem in the past, and I can't remember if I've ever found a solution that works by animating the constraints in an animation block. The way I have gotten it to work is to use a timer or CADisplayLink to adjust the height constraint.

-(void)shrinkLabel {
    self.constraintWhiteHeight.constant -= 1;
    if (self.constraintWhiteHeight.constant >= secondaryHeight)
    [self performSelector:@selector(shrinkLabel) withObject:nil afterDelay:.05];
}

After Edit:

Although the timer method works, it doesn't always look smooth, depending on the speed and increments you use. Another way to do this is to use a large UIView (the same size as the yellow label in your movie) with a smaller UILabel inside that has centerX and centerY constraints to the larger view. Then, animate the yellow view as usual with animateWithDuration:animations:

-(void)shrinkLabel {
    self.yellowViewHeightCon.constant = secondaryHeight;
    [UIView animateWithDuration:5 animations:^{
        [self layoutIfNeeded];
    }];
}