UISearchBar within a UIToolbar won't show cancel button

Question

I have a UISearchBar nested as a UIBarButtonItem within a UIToolbar. The basic functionality works, but the cancel button and the scope bar refuse to display. I've tried enabling them in the interface builder, and I've also tried manually calling [searchBar setShowsCancelButton:YES], but neither method works. Any ideas?

This is on an iPad. I tried in iOS 3, and it doesn't work in 4.2, either.

Underground

Answer 1

You need to wrap the UISearchBar with another view.

UISearchBar *searchBar = [UISearchBar new];
UIView *searchBarContainer = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:searchBar.frame];
[searchBarContainer addSubview:searchBar];
UIBarButtonItem *searchBarItem =
    [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:searchBarContainer];

Underfoot

Answer 2

You've simply hit a limitation on how UISearchBar works. One workaround is to layer the UISearchBar over the UIToolbar rather than having it genuinely live in the toolbar. This works visually because a search bar is painted just like a toolbar - their gradients are the same.

Tonality

Answer 3

is it really necessary to ever use a Cancel button in a search bar? Just use the textDidChange method to see if the string has been cleared and use that to do the same thing the cancel would.

Dunlap

so you're saying that whenever the user deletes the last character the keyboard should dismiss and editing end? That seems like presumptuous behavior on the part of the app. – Medawar