UINavigationBar multi-line title

Question

Is there a straightforward way of overriding the titleView of the current navigation bar item in a navigation bar within a navigation controller? I've tried creating a new UIView and replacing the titleView property of topView with my own UIVIew with no success.

Basically, I want a multi-line title for the navigation bar title. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Set the titleView property of the UINavigationItem. For example, in the view controller's viewDidLoad method you could do something like:

UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 480, 44)];
label.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
label.numberOfLines = 2;
label.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize: 14.0f];
label.shadowColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.0 alpha:0.5];
label.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentCenter;
label.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
label.text = @"This is a\nmultiline string";

self.navigationItem.titleView = label;

#if !__has_feature(objc_arc)
[label release];
#endif

It shows up like this:

Remember the titleView property is ignored if leftBarButtonItem is not nil.