Centering subview's X in autolayout throws “not prepared for the constraint”

Question

I have a custom UIView subclass which is being initialized via a nib.

In -awakeFromNib, I\'m creating a subview and attempting to center it in its super

Answer 1

As the error states, you must add the constraint to a view such that the views involved in the constraint are the view you're adding it to or a subview of that view. In the case of your code above, you should be adding that constraint to self, rather than [self internalView]. The reason it doesn't work as written is one of the views involved in the constraint (self) is not in the view hierarchy if you consider only [self internalView] and below).

For more details, see the discussion section of the documentation on the addConstraint: method.

Here is your line of code, fixed as I suggest:

UIView* internalView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero];
internalView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = NO;
[self setInternalView:internalView];

[self addConstraint: [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem: [self internalMapView]
                                         attribute: NSLayoutAttributeCenterX
                                         relatedBy: NSLayoutRelationEqual
                                         toItem: self
                                         attribute: NSLayoutAttributeCenterX
                                         multiplier: 1
                                         constant: 0]];

Answer 2

Short answer: swap parent and child view.
Assuming self is the parent view:

• bad: [subview addConstraint [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:self...

• good: [self addConstraint [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:subview...

---

Swift

subview.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
self.addConstraints(NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat(
    "H:|-0-[subview]-0-|",
    options: .DirectionLeadingToTrailing,
    metrics: nil,
    views: ["subview":subview]))

Obj-C

[subview setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:NO];
[self addConstraints:[NSLayoutConstraint
                      constraintsWithVisualFormat:@"H:|-0-[subview]-0-|"
                      options:NSLayoutFormatDirectionLeadingToTrailing
                      metrics:nil
                      views:NSDictionaryOfVariableBindings(subview)]];