Troubles with UISearchBar \ UISearchDisplayViewController

Question

I'm having a hard time with my SearchDisplayViewController on iOS 7. I have a searchBar hidden over a UITableViewController, like

self.tableView.tableHeaderView = searchBar;

Problem is that when I tap on the searchBar to type in something, then the view starts greying out, and I quickly tap the screen in a random point to dismiss it, coming back to the tableView, the searchBar disappears. Totally. Only on iOS 7 though.

Debugging it, the frame is always the same: 0,0,320,44. But the bar is invisible!

Also tried to do

self.tableView.contentOffset = CGPointMake(0,self.searchDisplayController.searchBar.frame.size.height);

still disappears when I do it quickly.

On iOS 6 it works just fine. Problem is only with iOS 7 as far as I'm seeing.

I don't know what it depends on, has anyone encountered the same problem I have?

Answer 1

As of Double tap UISearchBar with search delegate on iOS 7 causes UISearchBar to disappear, I found the workaround to actually work and solved the bug - for now.

- (void)searchDisplayControllerDidEndSearch:(UISearchDisplayController *)controller
{
    if (floor(NSFoundationVersionNumber) > NSFoundationVersionNumber_iOS_6_1) {
        [self.tableView insertSubview:self.searchDisplayController.searchBar aboveSubview:self.tableView];
    }
}

Answer 2

I encountered the same issue, and noticed that searchDisplayControllerDidEndSearch was being called twice. The first time, the superview of self.searchDisplayController.searchBar is the UITableView, and the second time it's still a UIView.

With the accepted answer, I worry about unintended consequences or unneeded overhead from re-inserting the subview every time the search bar is double-tapped, and I also worry about it breaking with future iOS versions. Fortunately, we can take advantage of the superview strangeness like this:

- (void)searchDisplayControllerDidEndSearch:(UISearchDisplayController *)controller {
    if (self.tableView != self.searchDisplayController.searchBar.superview) {
        [self.tableView insertSubview:self.searchDisplayController.searchBar aboveSubview:self.tableView];
    }
}

If I had to guess what was happening, the UISearchBar is automatically creating a temporary UIView as its superview when it's active – this is the view seen when the search is being performed. While the UISearchBar is being dismissed, the superview gets set back to be the UITableView it had before, unless it gets dismissed so quickly that it was never properly initialized, in which case it cleans up improperly and the UITableView never gets the UISearchBar back as its child.

This solution still isn't ideal, and I think Apple must be doing something different in its own apps because their search bar UX feels a bit better. I think it would be better not to handle the second tap in the first place until the UISearchBar was ready. I tried using the other UISearchBarDelegate methods to do this, but I couldn't find an appropriate hook to override the current behavior.

Answer 3

I had the same problem with iOS 7 and I solved it from the apple documentation. The error most people do is that they associate the UISearchBar variable to the self.searchDisplayController.searchBar as the same...! NO NO..! They are 2 different things!!! UISearchBar should be declared and initialized and then wrapped into self.searchDisplayController as searchBar then later wrapped into self.tableView.tableHeaderView by so doing it will not disappear!!!

self.searchBar = [[UISearchBar alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.view.frame.size.width, 44)];

self.searchDisplayController = [[UISearchDisplayController alloc] initWithSearchBar:self.searchBar contentsController:self];

self.searchDisplayController.delegate = self;

self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsDataSource = self;

self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsDelegate = self;

[self.searchBar setPlaceholder:@"search the hell in me"];

self.tableView.tableHeaderView = self.searchDisplayController.searchBar;