How to send the touch events of UIScrollView to the view behind it?

Question

i have a transparent UIScrollView on top of another view.

the scroll view has content - text and images, used to display info.

the view behind it has some images

Answer 1

First off UIScrollViews only inherently recognize UIPanGestureRecognizers and UIPinchGestureRecognizers so you need to add a UITapGestureRecognizer to the UIScrollView so it can recognize any tapping gestures as well:

UITapGestureRecognizer *tap = [[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(handleTap:)];

// To prevent the pan gesture of the UIScrollView from swallowing up the
// touch event
tap.cancelsTouchesInView = NO;

[scrollView addGestureRecognizer:tap];

Then once you receive that tap gesture and the handleTap: action is triggered, you can use locationInView: to detect whether the tap gesture's position is in fact within the frame of one of the images below your scroll view, for example:

- (void)handleTap:(UITapGestureRecognizer *)recognizer {

    // First get the tap gesture recognizers's location in the entire 
    // view's window
    CGPoint tapPoint = [recognizer locationInView:self.view];

    // Then see if it falls within one of your below images' frames
    for (UIImageView* image in relevantImages) {

        // If the image's coordinate system isn't already equivalent to
        // self.view, convert it so it has the same coordinate system
        // as the tap.
        CGRect imageFrameInSuperview = [image.superview convertRect:image toView:self.view]

        // If the tap in fact lies inside the image bounds, 
        // perform the appropriate action.
        if (CGRectContainsPoint(imageFrameInSuperview, tapPoint)) {
            // Perhaps call a method here to react to the image tap
            [self reactToImageTap:image];
            break;
        }
    }
}

This way, the above code is only performed if a tap gesture is recognized, your program only reacts to a tap on the scroll view if the tap location falls within an image; otherwise, you can just scroll your UIScrollView as usual.