detect long press on UINavigationItem's back button

Question

I want to add functionality to my back buttons through my UINavigationController-based app where long-pressing the back button will pop to root. However, I can't figure out where to attach the gesture recognizer. Do I subclass UINavigationBar and try and detect if the long press is in the left button region?

I've heard of people adding similar functionality before. Anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

I know this question is old, but I came up with a solution. Instead of trying to add the gesture recognizer to the button itself (which would be ideal), I added it to the self.navigationController.navigationBar and then in the action method, use the locationInView to see if I'm over the back button. I wasn't entirely sure about how to identify the back button precisely, so I'm clumsily just grabbing the the first subview with an x coordinate less than some arbitrary value, but it seems promising. If someone has a better way to identify the frame of the back button, let me know.

- (void)longPress:(UILongPressGestureRecognizer *)sender 
{
    if (sender.state == UIGestureRecognizerStateEnded)
    {
        // set a default rectangle in case we don't find the back button for some reason

        CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0, 0, 100, 40);

        // iterate through the subviews looking for something that looks like it might be the right location to be the back button

        for (UIView *subview in self.navigationController.navigationBar.subviews)
        {
            if (subview.frame.origin.x < 30) 
            {
                rect = subview.frame;
                break;
            }
        }

        // ok, let's get the point of the long press

        CGPoint longPressPoint = [sender locationInView:self.navigationController.navigationBar];

        // if the long press point in the rectangle then do whatever

        if (CGRectContainsPoint(rect, longPressPoint))
            [self doWhatever];
    }
}

- (void)addLongPressGesture
{
    if (NSClassFromString(@"UILongPressGestureRecognizer"))
    {
        UILongPressGestureRecognizer *longPress = [[UILongPressGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(longPress:)];
        [self.navigationController.navigationBar addGestureRecognizer:longPress];
        [longPress release];
    }
}