Can't get UITextField to autoshrink text

Question

I have a UITextField on a table view cell, and when it's text becomes too long I would like the font size to decrease. I want to make it very clear that I am talking about a UITextField, not a UILabel or a UITextView. The reason I say this is because I have seen this question pop up several times and the answers were all based on UILabel instead of UITextField. For example, someone asked "I can't get my UITextField to autoshrink" and the answer was "make sure it's numberOfLines is set to 1". To the best of my knowledge, a UITextField does not even have that property and is a single line control.

I have tried:

• in IB setting the font to system 14.0, minFontSize to 7 and checking the "adjust to fit" box
• in code in tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:

ptCell.name.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize: 14.0];
ptCell.name.adjustsFontSizeToFitWidth = YES;
ptCell.name.minimumFontSize = 7.0;

but neither of these have worked. By that I mean that instead of the text shrinking it truncates the tail.

Does anyone know what I am missing? Presumably this should work because I have seen other questions complaining that it is doing that when the user does not want it to.

Answer 1

I had the same problem. The UITextField stoped shrinking the text when it was too long, but instead it resized itself and grew outside its 'bounds'.

The solution that helped me was to set width constraint on given UITextField. After that it did not grew anymore, instead the text inside got smaller as intended. (Of course you have to set minFontSize and check the "adjust to fit" box in storyboard.)

I know it's kind of a late, but if anyone else will find this question via google as I did...it might just help.

Answer 2

I used the answer posted by @Purva as a starting point to come up with this method that gives the required font size starting at the configured font size, and not to drop below the configured minimum font size. Whereas @Purva tested for the height of the text I required the width to fit. This method can be put in either a category or a subclass of UITextField. I have it in a subclass which also captures the UITextFieldTextDidChangeNotification. From this notification handler I call the new method and resize the font if required. I also call it when I am assigning new text to the textfield to make sure it will fit by subclassing - (void)setText: (NSString*)text.

In each case, when I call it I am using the following code:

    CGFloat requiredFontSize = self.requiredFontSize;
    if( self.font.pointSize != requiredFontSize )
    {
        self.font = [self.font fontWithSize: requiredFontSize];
    }

Here is the new method:

- (CGFloat)requiredFontSize
{
    const CGRect  textBounds = [self textRectForBounds: self.frame];
    const CGFloat maxWidth   = textBounds.size.width;

    if( _originalFontSize == -1 ) _originalFontSize = self.font.pointSize;

    UIFont* font     = self.font;
    CGFloat fontSize = _originalFontSize;

    BOOL found = NO;
    do
    {
        if( font.pointSize != fontSize )
        {
            font = [font fontWithSize: fontSize];
        }

        CGSize size = [self.text sizeWithFont: font];
        if( size.width <= maxWidth )
        {
            found = YES;
            break;
        }

        fontSize -= 1.0;
        if( fontSize < self.minimumFontSize )
        {
            fontSize = self.minimumFontSize;
            break;
        }

    } while( TRUE );

    return( fontSize );
}

Answer 3

I think you want to set the adjustsFontSizeToFitWidth property for your UITextField to YES, and specify a minimumFontSize. Works for me, but I add the UITextField programmatically - IB issue?