Dismissing UIAlertViews when entering background state

Question

Apple recommends dismissing any UIAlertViews/UIActionSheets when entering background state in iOS 4. This is to avoid any confusion on the user's part when he relaunches the application later. I wonder how I could elegantly dismiss all UIAlertViews at once, without retaining a reference to it everytime I set one up...

Any idea ?

Answer 1

My call would be to add a category to UIAlertview adding the following function :

- (void) hide {
  [self dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:0 animated:YES];
}

And to suscribe to UIApplicationWillResignActiveNotification :

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:alertView selector:@selector(hide) name:@"UIApplicationWillResignActiveNotification" object:nil];

Answer 2

I was intrigued by Dad's answer (funny username :), and curious why it was down-voted.

So I tried it.

Here is the .m part of a subclass of UIAlertView.

Edit: (Cédric) I have added a way to catch calls to delegate methods and remove the observer then to avoid multiple registrations to the notification center.

Everything bundled in a class in this github repo: https://github.com/sdarlington/WSLViewAutoDismiss

    #import "UIAlertViewAutoDismiss.h"
    #import <objc/runtime.h>

    @interface UIAlertViewAutoDismiss () <UIAlertViewDelegate> {
        id<UIAlertViewDelegate> __unsafe_unretained privateDelegate;
    }
    @end

    @implementation UIAlertViewAutoDismiss

    - (id)initWithTitle:(NSString *)title
                message:(NSString *)message
               delegate:(id)delegate
      cancelButtonTitle:(NSString *)cancelButtonTitle
      otherButtonTitles:(NSString *)otherButtonTitles, ...
    {
        self = [super initWithTitle:title
                            message:message
                           delegate:self
                  cancelButtonTitle:cancelButtonTitle
                  otherButtonTitles:nil, nil];

        if (self) {
            va_list args;
            va_start(args, otherButtonTitles);
            for (NSString *anOtherButtonTitle = otherButtonTitles; anOtherButtonTitle != nil; anOtherButtonTitle = va_arg(args, NSString *)) {
                [self addButtonWithTitle:anOtherButtonTitle];
            }
            privateDelegate = delegate;
        }
        return self;
    }

    - (void)dealloc
    {
        privateDelegate = nil;
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification object:nil];
        [super dealloc];
    }

    - (void)setDelegate:(id)delegate
    {
        privateDelegate = delegate;
    }

    - (id)delegate
    {
        return privateDelegate;
    }

    - (void)show
    {
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
                                                 selector:@selector(applicationDidEnterBackground:)
                                                     name:UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification
                                                   object:nil];

        [super show];
    }

    - (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(NSNotification *)notification
    {
        [super dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:[self cancelButtonIndex] animated:NO];
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification object:nil];
    }

    #pragma mark - UIAlertViewDelegate

    // The code below avoids to re-implement all protocol methods to forward to the real delegate.

    - (id)forwardingTargetForSelector:(SEL)aSelector
    {
        struct objc_method_description hasMethod = protocol_getMethodDescription(@protocol(UIAlertViewDelegate), aSelector, NO, YES);
        if (hasMethod.name != NULL) {
            // The method is that of the UIAlertViewDelegate.

            if (aSelector == @selector(alertView:didDismissWithButtonIndex:) ||
                aSelector == @selector(alertView:clickedButtonAtIndex:))
            {
                [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self
                                                                name:UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification
                                                              object:nil];
            }
            return privateDelegate;
        }
        else {
            return [super forwardingTargetForSelector:aSelector];
        }
    }

    @end

It works nicely. It's great, because you can just start using it the same way that you used to use UIAlertView.

I haven't had time to test it thoroughly, but I didn't notice any side effect.

Answer 3

A totally different approach is a recursive search.

Recursive function for your application delegate

- (void)checkViews:(NSArray *)subviews {
    Class AVClass = [UIAlertView class];
    Class ASClass = [UIActionSheet class];
    for (UIView * subview in subviews){
        if ([subview isKindOfClass:AVClass]){
            [(UIAlertView *)subview dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:[(UIAlertView *)subview cancelButtonIndex] animated:NO];
        } else if ([subview isKindOfClass:ASClass]){
            [(UIActionSheet *)subview dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:[(UIActionSheet *)subview cancelButtonIndex] animated:NO];
        } else {
            [self checkViews:subview.subviews];
        }
    }
}

Calling it from the applicationDidEnterBackground procedure

[self checkViews:application.windows];

Answer 4

huh. Haven't tried this yet, but I wonder if it would make sense to create a subclass of UIAlertView that listens for this Notification and closes itself if so...

That'd have the "automatically" without retaining / keeping it around characteristic OP is requesting. Make sure to unregister for the notification on close (else boom!)

Answer 5

As someone mentioned in a comment: the accepted answer isn't the best/cleanest one since iOS 4.0 when we have blocks! Here's how I do it:

UIAlertView* alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Alert!" message:@"This alert will dismiss when application resigns active!" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil];
[alert show];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserverForName:UIApplicationWillResignActiveNotification object:nil queue:[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] usingBlock:^(NSNotification* notification){
        [alert dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:0 animated:NO];
    }];

Answer 6

UIAlertView was deprecated in iOS 8 in favor of the UIAlertController. Unfortunately, this proves to be a tricky problem because the accepted solution won't work, as Apple explicitly doesn't support subclassing UIAlertController:

The UIAlertController class is intended to be used as-is and does not support subclassing. The view hierarchy for this class is private and must not be modified.

My solution is to simply traverse the view controller tree and dismiss all UIAlertControllers that you find. You can enable this globally by creating an extension of UIApplication and then calling it in the AppDelegate applicationDidEnterBackground method.

Try this (in Swift):

extension UIApplication
{
    class func dismissOpenAlerts(base: UIViewController? = UIApplication.sharedApplication().keyWindow?.rootViewController)
    {
        //If it's an alert, dismiss it
        if let alertController = base as? UIAlertController
        {
            alertController.dismissViewControllerAnimated(false, completion: nil)
        }

        //Check all children
        if base != nil
        {
            for controller in base!.childViewControllers
            {
                if let alertController = controller as? UIAlertController
                {
                    alertController.dismissViewControllerAnimated(false, completion: nil)
                }
            }
        }

        //Traverse the view controller tree
        if let nav = base as? UINavigationController
        {
           dismissOpenAlerts(nav.visibleViewController)
        }
        else if let tab = base as? UITabBarController, let selected = tab.selectedViewController
        {
           dismissOpenAlerts(selected)
        }
        else if let presented = base?.presentedViewController
        {
           dismissOpenAlerts(presented)
        }
    }
}

And then in your AppDelegate:

func applicationDidEnterBackground(application: UIApplication)
{
    UIApplication.dismissOpenAlerts()
}