programmatically highlight UIBarButtonItem

Question

after tapping the 'record' BarButtonItem I would like to keep it programmatically highlighted until the recording is over. The highlighting graphics of iOS are very good, therefor I would like to remain or set that state.

Up to now I found 'setSelected' and 'setHighlighted' but these do not work on a UIBarButtonItem. Any suggestions on how to solve this? Thank you in advance, Koen.

Answer 1

setSelected and setHighlighted work fine on UIControls, but not UIBarButtonItems (which are not UIControls).

I'd recommend using UIBarButtonItem's - (void)setBackgroundImage:(UIImage *)backgroundImage forState:(UIControlState)state barMetrics:(UIBarMetrics)barMetrics (documentation linked) method to change the background image to something that mimics highlighting.

You can also set a custom UIView on the item which also mimics highlighting (see the customView property).

Answer 2

If you absolutely want to use the default graphics, you could initialize your button item as

UIBarButtonItem *toggleButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"MyButton" 
                                                                     style:UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered 
                                                                    target:someObject 
                                                                    action:@selector(doSomething:)];

and toggle it with

toggleButtonItem.style = (toggleButtonItem.style == UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered) 
                         ? UIBarButtonItemStyleDone : UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered;

You would also need to use the style property to read the current state.

BOOL isSelected = (toggleButtonItem.style == UIBarButtonItemStyleDone)

Answer 3

If you add a UIBarButtonItem with a UIButton backing it, you can just ask for the CustomView.

UIButton *button = (UIButton *)[self.barButtonItem customView];
[button setSelected:YES];