Interface Builder won't allow connections to custom UIView class?

Question

Using Xcode 4.3.3, I can\'t figure out how to connect outlets in a custom UIView class with objects created in Interface Builder.

In one ViewController, I have a var

Answer 1

Note that I did get this to work today, but had to insert/type the outlets by hand in the derived class, then I could drag from the header file to the UI element in the Storyboard, but not the other way around.

Answer 2

I opened a bug with Apple. If anything interesting happens, I'll update this answer.

Updated 10/4/13: After much research, it seems the root of the problem is that IB believes that I'm trying to connect objects to properties within a class, that I'm going to then create a swarm of instances of this class and then IB won't be able to tell which instance should handle the messages. So, it disallows the connection on the belief that I'm (potentially) making simultaneous connections from one object to multiple copies of a property across several instances of the class.

My view is that I only want a single instance of the custom UIView, and that I should be able to tell IB, "don't panic, you're only dealing with this one instance."

I'm now focused on a new project and haven't had a chance to retry this in Xcode 5; however, given the info above, I'm not optimistic it will work in Xcode 5, either.

Answer 3

In my experience, you add IBAction and IBOutlet to subclasses of UIViewController and not subclasses of UIView. So within the MVC model, your "1" UIViewController has all of these IBOutlets in it and then you use the data from these IBOutlets to update your views.

So you are fine creating the UIViews objects in IB and then creating the corresponding classes in code and then changing the class of the UIViews objects in IB to your UIView subclass. Just put all IBOutlets in the UIViewController that has all the UIViews under it, get the values you need from the IBOutlets and then pass them down to (set them in) your UIView subclasses.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

I had the same problem and found a workaround:

1) Open the Assistant Editor with customView3.xib on the left and customView3.h on the right

2) ctrl + drag from UISlider in customView3.xib to the customView3.h code on the right

3) An option to create a new Outlet connection will pop up.

4) Name the connection and click connect

It will then create a connected IBOutlet.

Answer 5

What you're trying to do is certainly both sensible (IMO) and possible. XCode is however quite quirky when it comes to establishing connections to outlets in subviews.

I've found that cleaning, rebuilding and sometimes restarting XCode tends to help, but sometimes it just doesn't work. In some cases I got it working by manually creating the outlet and dragging from the outlet to the control rather than the other way.

This is not very helpful, I know, but I just wanted to make it clear that this is supposed to work and when it doesn't it is most certainly due to a bug in XCode.