Best way to build 10x10 grid of UIButtons?

Question

I\'m going to have a 10x10 grid of UIButton objects. Each of these UIButtons is going to need to be referenced by the row and column number, so they should probably be stored in

Answer 1

I personally don't like IB, so I recommend to do it programmatically!

Use an NSArray to store your UIButton's. Each button's index is row*COLUMNS+column.

Set the tag property to BASE+index (BASE being an arbitrary value > 0) so that you can find a button's position: index=tag-BASE; row=index/COLUMNS; column=index%COLUMNS;

- (void)loadView {
    [super loadView];

    for (NSInteger row = 0; row < ROWS; row++) {
        for (NSInteger col = 0; col < COLS; col++) {
            UIButton *button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeRoundedRect];
            [buttonArray addObject:button];
            button.tag = BASE + row * COLS + col;
            button.frame = ...;
            [button addTarget:self action:@selector(didPushButton:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchDown];
            [self.view addSubview:button];
        }
    }
}

- (void)didPushButton:(id)sender {
    UIButton *button = (UIButton *)sender;
    NSInteger index = button.tag - BASE;
    NSInteger row = index / COLS;
    NSInteger col = index % COLS;
    // ...
}

Answer 2

You can use a GridView from the moriarty library to help with layout - positioning each button where you want it. Building partially on squelart's sample code as a createButtonAtRow:col: method, this could work as follows:

GridView* gridview = [[GridView alloc] initWithRows:ROWS cols:COLS];
for (NSInteger row = 0; row < ROWS; ++row) {
  for (NSInteger col = 0; col < COLS; ++col) {
    [gridView addsubView:[self createButtonAtRow:row col:col]];
  }
}
[myView addSubview:gridView];
[gridView release];  // Let myView retain gridView.