How to add a badge to a UITabBar that is customizable?

Question

I am adding a badge to my UITabBarController's UITabBar as such:

UITabBarItem *tbi = (UITabBarItem *)[stTabBarController.tabBar.items objectAtIndex:1];
tbi.badgeValue = @"2";

However, my UITabBarController is customizeable, so the index may change. How can I make sure the badge gets applied to the correct UITabBarItem?

Answer 1

One suggestion you might consider is setting a tag on each tab bar item. You can do this in Interface Builder or when you create the item by code. You can then loop through the view controllers in the tab bar controller looking for the one with the tab bar item you are interested in. For example:

// #define MyTabBarItemTag 999

for (UIViewController *viewController in stTabBarController.viewControllers) {
    if (viewController.tabBarItem.tag == MyTabBarItemTag) {
        viewController.tabBarItem.badgeValue = @"2";
    }
}

Answer 2

UITabBarItem *tbi = (UITabBarItem *)self.tabController.selectedViewController.tabBarItem;
tbi.badgeValue = @"New";

Also works.

Answer 3

Swift version:

self.tabBarController?.selectedViewController?.tabBarItem.badgeValue="12";

Answer 4

I'd use an NSMutableDictionary property on the class that owns the tab bar controller, associating tab names with positions, and a method to retrieve by name:

-(UITabBarItem*)getTabByName:(NSString*)tabName {
    return [stTabBarController.tabBar.items objectAtIndex:[[tabDict valueForKey:tabName] intValue]];
}

Initialize the dictionary in your setup code for each tab, since you know the tab index at that time:

[tabDict setValue:[stTabBarController.tabBar.items objectAtIndex:1] forKey:@"myTabName"];