Handle long press on a single UITabBarItem

Question

I use the long press gesture on a tab bar. But I only need the long press gesture for one particular tab bar item.

How can I solve this problem? Could I customize the long press gesture in tab bar?

Answer 1

You can subclass UITabBarController and add a UILongPressGestureRecognizer to it's tabBar. Acting as the delegate of the gesture recognizer will allow you to be selective over when it will detect a long press. Since the tab bar item will be selected as soon as the user touches it you can use the selectedItem property to perform this check.

@interface TabBarController () <UIGestureRecognizerDelegate>
@property (nonatomic, strong) UILongPressGestureRecognizer *longPressRecognizer;

@end

@implementation TabBarController

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];

    self.longPressRecognizer = [[UILongPressGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(recognizerFired:)];
    self.longPressRecognizer.delegate = self;
    [self.tabBar addGestureRecognizer:self.longPressRecognizer];
}

- (BOOL)gestureRecognizerShouldBegin:(UIGestureRecognizer *)gestureRecognizer {

    // This will ensure the long press only occurs for the
    // tab bar item which has it's tag set to 1.
    // You can set this in Interface Builder or in code
    // wherever you are creating your tabs.
    if (self.tabBar.selectedItem.tag == 1) {
        return YES;
    }
    else {
        return NO;
    }

}

- (void)recognizerFired:(UILongPressGestureRecognizer *)recognizer {
    // Handle the long press...
}

@end