UIAppearance not taking effect on UILabels created programmatically

Question

We have extended UILabel to be able to apply standard fonts and colors for all uses of a given label type in our apps. Eg.

@interface UILabelHeadingBold : UILab         


        

Answer 1

Simple hack that is working for me with no issues is to create a category with a UIAppearance setter that modifies UILabel properties.

Following UIAppearance conventions I created a method:

- (void)setTextAttributes:(NSDictionary *)numberTextAttributes;
{
    UIFont *font = [numberTextAttributes objectForKey:UITextAttributeFont];
    if (font) {
        self.font = font;
    }
    UIColor *textColor = [numberTextAttributes objectForKey:UITextAttributeTextColor];
    if (textColor) {
        self.textColor = textColor;
    }
    UIColor *textShadowColor = [numberTextAttributes objectForKey:UITextAttributeTextShadowColor];
    if (textShadowColor) {
        self.shadowColor = textShadowColor;
    }
    NSValue *shadowOffsetValue = [numberTextAttributes objectForKey:UITextAttributeTextShadowOffset];
    if (shadowOffsetValue) {
        UIOffset shadowOffset = [shadowOffsetValue UIOffsetValue];
        self.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(shadowOffset.horizontal, shadowOffset.vertical);
    }
}

In UILabel category:

@interface UILabel (UISS)

- (void)setTextAttributes:(NSDictionary *)numberTextAttributes UI_APPEARANCE_SELECTOR;

@end

I'm still trying to figure out why the original setter does not work.