iPad - UIBarButtonItem Disappears After Hiding UIToolbar

Question

I am creating some custom UIBarButtonItems for my bottom toolbar with the following method:

- (void)initialisePageNoProperties
{
    pageNoTextField = [[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 50, 30)];
    [pageNoTextField setDelegate:self];
    pageNoTextField.text = @"0";              
    pageNoTextField.textColor = [UIColor blackColor];
    pageNoTextField.backgroundColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
    pageNoTextField.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentRight;
    pageNoTextField.contentVerticalAlignment = UIControlContentVerticalAlignmentCenter;
    pageNoTextField.borderStyle = UITextBorderStyleRoundedRect;
    pageNoTextField.autocorrectionType = UITextAutocorrectionTypeNo; // no auto correction support
    pageNoTextField.keyboardType = UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad;
    pageNoTextField.returnKeyType = UIReturnKeyGo;
    [pageNoTextField setClearsOnBeginEditing:YES];

    pageNoBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:pageNoTextField];
    pageNoBarButtonItem.style = UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered;

    noOfPagesTextField = [[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 50, 30)];
    noOfPagesTextField.text = @"0"; 
    noOfPagesTextField.textColor = [UIColor blackColor];
    noOfPagesTextField.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
    noOfPagesTextField.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentLeft;
    noOfPagesTextField.contentVerticalAlignment = UIControlContentVerticalAlignmentCenter;
    noOfPagesTextField.enabled = NO;
    noOfPagesBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:noOfPagesTextField];
}

These buttons then get added to the bottom toolbar with the following method:

- (void)configurePageNoDisplay
{
    if(![self.navigationController isToolbarHidden])
    {
        NSMutableArray *items = [[self.navigationController.toolbar items] mutableCopy];
        bool insertIntoArray = ([items count] == 10); // without the page number display the items array will contain 10 items

        if (insertIntoArray)
        {
            [items insertObject:pageNoBarButtonItem atIndex:3];  
        }
        else 
        {
            [items replaceObjectAtIndex:3 withObject:pageNoBarButtonItem];
        }

        if (insertIntoArray)
        {
            [items insertObject:noOfPagesBarButtonItem atIndex:4]; 
        }
        else 
        {
            [items replaceObjectAtIndex:4 withObject:noOfPagesBarButtonItem];
        }

        [self.navigationController.toolbar setItems:items];
        [self SetPageNoDisplay:[pdfViewCtrl GetCurrentPage]];
    }
}

and the values for these buttons get set as follows:

- (void)SetPageNoDisplay:(NSInteger) pageNumber
{
    pageNoTextField.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", pageNumber]; 
    noOfPagesTextField.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"of %d", [[pdfViewCtrl GetDoc] GetPageCount]];
}

The buttons and the fields they contain are declared as follows:

@property (strong, nonatomic) IBOutlet UIBarButtonItem *pageNoBarButtonItem;
@property (strong, nonatomic) IBOutlet UIBarButtonItem *noOfPagesBarButtonItem;
@property (strong, nonatomic) IBOutlet UITextField *pageNoTextField;
@property (strong, nonatomic) IBOutlet UITextField *noOfPagesTextField;

Originally they were not declared as IBOutlets - but I read a suggestion that doing so would help my problem - unfortunately it did not help.

I hide/show the bottom toolbar in response to a double tap from the user:

- (void)handleDoubleTap:(UITapGestureRecognizer *)gestureRecognizer
{  
    [self.navigationController setNavigationBarHidden:![self.navigationController isNavigationBarHidden] animated:true];
    [self.navigationController setToolbarHidden:![self.navigationController isToolbarHidden] animated:true];
    [self configurePageNoDisplay];
    //[sideBarTab setHidden:![sideBarTab isHidden]];
}

The problem I have is that once the toolbar has been hidden - the buttons do not appear again when it is re-shown. If I rotate the iPad after re-showing the toolbar then the buttons appear again.

Answer 1

I ended up resolving this issue by taking a different approach. I used a standard UIToolbar, rather than the navigation controller toolbar. Using Interface Builder I was able to add a plain UIView to the toolbar and then add the 2 UITextFields inside the UIView. This way I did not have to worry about all the code to add the text fields to the toolbar inside of bar button items - or calling the code to reinstate the text fields on orientation change, hiding and showing of the toolbar etc. It ended up being a much simpler and more robust approach.