UItextfield password

Question

I know that its possible to make UITextfield operate in a password mode by using the following :

textfield.secureTextEntry = YES;

This changes all characters entered by the user into '*'. However, the last character entered flashes up for about half a second. I understand that this is standard behavior.

Is there any way of stopping this and keeping the characters entered completely obscured?

To achieve this, Im thinking of subclassing UITextField and then overriding drawTextInRect:rect

But I would welcome any other suggestions.

Answer 1

You can do this:

• Set the UITextField as regular, not secret.
• Listen to the event UITextFieldTextDidChangeNotification
• When it happens replace the characters of your textfield for "*" and store the real password in a property.

This code works, it's kind of ugly, though, it can probably be optimized.

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];

    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver: self selector: @selector(keyPressed:) name: UITextFieldTextDidChangeNotification object: nil];
}

- (void) keyPressed: (NSNotification *) notification {
    if(!self.password)
        self.password = @"";

    NSString* fieldText = [notification.object valueForKey:@"text"];
    NSString* lastChar = [fieldText substringFromIndex:fieldText.length-1];

    if(self.password.length>fieldText.length)
        self.password = [self.password substringToIndex:self.password.length-1];
    else
        self.password = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", self.password, lastChar];

    NSString* secret = @"";
    for (int l = 0; l<self.password.length; l++) {
        secret = [secret stringByAppendingString:@"*"];
    }
    self.textField.text = secret;
}