Creating a UIView that sticks to bottom of UITableView

Question

I have a grouped UITableView and I'd like to add a UIButton to the very bottom of my UITableView. I'm using Storyboard and a UITableViewController. I'm not quite sure where I need to add code or drag/drop UI Elements. I've tried adding a UIView as the footerview in Storyboard and then adding a button to that view, but this doesn't have the desired effect of always staying on the very bottom of the view, similar to a tabbar. Also, the button should always stay in the forefront, and the UITableView should scroll behind it.

// tried this but it didn't work:
self.tablview.tableFooterView = [[UIView alloc] initwithview...]

Answer 1

If you want your UIButton to be at the bottom of the screen regardless of the scroll position of the UITableView (i.e., not inside the UITableView) then you should probably not use a UITableViewController subclass. Instead, if you use a UIViewController subclass, you can simply add a UITableView to your root view property and add a UIButton or some other view (such as a UIToolbar, etc) with appropriate layout constraints to place it at the bottom of the screen - or wherever you want it. This is not really possible with a UITableViewController subclass, as the root view property is required to be a UITableView instance.

Answer 2

OK, If you want to add the toolbar straight to the UITableViewController, you could follow the instructions in this tutorial to create a "fake" footer view.

If you are interested in being quick and easy, follow the answer giver above by @CharlesA, but it would probably look nicer if you used a standard toolbar with a UIBarButtonItem instead of just a Round Rect Button.

If you are using a Navigation Controller, then you can just unhide you toolbar (because the Navigation Controller comes with one already), and add a button to do what you need. Coding would be like this:

[self.navigationController setToolbarHidden:NO];

UIBarButtonItem *buttonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle: @"Button Name"
                                            style: UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered
                                           target: self
                                           action: @selector(yourMethod:)];

self.toolbarItems = [ NSArray arrayWithObjects: buttonItem, nil ];

IMO the way to do it is create a UIViewController instead of a UITableViewController. Add a TableView to the VC, raise the bottom of the TableView enough to fit a toolbar under there, drag and drop a toolbar, drag and drop a UIBarButtonItem onto it. Control-click from the UIBar button item and create your IBAction.

Quick, simple, pretty.

Answer 3

There is one way to add views to the bottom of UITableViewController without using a UIViewController subclass.

UIView *footerView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, footerY, footerWidth, footerHeight)];
[self.navigationController.view addSubview:footerView];

Hope this help!