drawRect on top of subviews

Question

I have subclassed UIView and added a drawRect method to it. Then I define a view using this custom class and add subviews to it.

The problem is that drawRect seem to draw stuff under the subviews (hence not visible).

I want stuff that drawRect draws appear above the subviews of my custom UIView.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

A subview will always be drawn on "top" of its superview.

Depending on your specific requirements, you may need to have a plain UIView as the background/container view, with your existing subviews in there, and then your custom view as another subview added to the very top, so it has the highest Z-order.

This would work, for example, if your custom view was a grid overlay that should be on top of everything else. The custom view would have to be non-opaque with a clear background colour.