Custom iPhone Keyboard

Question

I need (i.e. a customer requirement) to provide a custom keyboard for the user to type text into both text fields and areas. I already have something that does the keyboard and appends test to a text field, however I'd like to make it more generic and have it act like the standard iphone keyboard, i.e. appear when teh user selects an editable text control. Currently my controller knows the target and the target is uneditable to prevent the standard keyboard.

Is there a way to hook into the behavior of text controls so I use my own keyboard easily?

Thanks, Vic

Kitty

I hope your customer doesn't intend on submitting this (presumably non-game) app to the App Store... – Hugely

Changing a core UI component of the iPhone? – Hugely

Have you tried the standard addTarget:action:forControlEvents:? If so, how did that not meet your needs? – Peale

As I mentioned below we are just prototyping touch interfaces. However it seems a bit of a restriction preventing software using their custom input control. I have only just got a device and to be honest the keyboard is completely rubbish for entering anything more than a word or two, I had thought about doing a T9 like editor for a little note app for myself. – Kitty

Answer 1

Here's an idea: modify the existing keyboard to your own needs. First, register to be notified when it appears on screen:

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self 
                                      selector:@selector(modifyKeyboard:)
                                      name:UIKeyboardWillShowNotification
                                      object:nil];

Then, in your modifyKeyboard method:

- (void)modifyKeyboard:(NSNotification *)notification 
{
    UIView *firstResponder = [[[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow] performSelector:@selector(firstResponder)];

    for (UIWindow *keyboardWindow in [[UIApplication sharedApplication] windows])
        for (UIView *keyboard in [keyboardWindow subviews])
            if([[keyboard description] hasPrefix:@"<UIKeyboard"] == YES)
            {
                MyFancyKeyboardView *customKeyboard = [[MyFancyKeyboardView alloc] initWithFrame: CGRectMake(0, 0, keyboard.frame.size.width, keyboard.frame.size.height);
                [keyboard addSubview: customKeyboard];
                [customKeyboard release];
            }
}

This adds your view on top of the original keyboard, so make sure you make it opaque.

Andra

Another interesting idea, thanks I'll give this a try too, thanks. – Kitty

Answer 2

You can do it with iOS 3.2 or later. Check the inputView property of UITextField for details.

Salt

Answer 3

As long as you're not submitting your app to the app store, you can use a technique called method swizzling to dynamically replace methods of core classes at runtime. For example:

@interface UIControl(CustomKeyboard)
- (BOOL)__my__becomeFirstResponder
@end

@implementation UIControl(CustomKeyboard)
- (BOOL)__my__becomeFirstResponder
{
    BOOL becameFirstResponder = [self __my__becomeFirstResponder];
    if ([self canBecomeFirstResponder]) {
        [MyKeyboard orderFront];
    }
    return becameFirstResponder;
}

+ (void)initialize
{
    Method old = class_getInstanceMethod(self, @selector(becomeFirstResponder));
    Method new = class_getInstanceMethod(self, @selector(__my__becomeFirstResponder));
    method_exchangeImplementations(old, new);
}
@end

Please don't use anything like this in any production code. Also, I haven't actually tested this, so YMMV.

Nela

Answer 4

It depends how custom you want it. I personally wanted a numeric only keyboard, but didn't like the number pad, so I used the standard keyboard and added in a standard filter, which is part of the options, which rejects all the key presses that aren't numbers or space or delete.

I can't say whether Apple would like this though, and you're going to have a very hard time writing your own behavior that acts like the other keyboards. So much so, that it should be declared a bad idea.

update based on your comment it sounds more like you just need to create a view with a lot of buttons on it, and move this view around with the animate option turned on. It could then sort of slide up from the bottom like a keyboard and slide away again when dismissed.

Luxor

Unfortunately the keyboard we need is not really a just a keyboard with characters on it, it has a few chars on it (true teh rest could be hidden in this mannner) but there are buttons that do a lot more than typing a single char. True I could add buttons elsewhere but it would be counter-intuative and look awful. I already have the keyboard working as required, I just need to wire it in easily, just wished the touch stuff on android was as stable a target as the ipod :-( – Kitty