Dismissing UIAlertViews when entering background state

Question

Apple recommends dismissing any UIAlertViews/UIActionSheets when entering background state in iOS 4. This is to avoid any confusion on the user's part when he relaunches the application later. I wonder how I could elegantly dismiss all UIAlertViews at once, without retaining a reference to it everytime I set one up...

Any idea ?

Solution 1

I was intrigued by Dad's answer (funny username :), and curious why it was down-voted.

So I tried it.

Here is the .m part of a subclass of UIAlertView.

Edit: (Cédric) I have added a way to catch calls to delegate methods and remove the observer then to avoid multiple registrations to the notification center.

Everything bundled in a class in this github repo: https://github.com/sdarlington/WSLViewAutoDismiss

    #import "UIAlertViewAutoDismiss.h"
    #import <objc/runtime.h>

    @interface UIAlertViewAutoDismiss () <UIAlertViewDelegate> {
        id<UIAlertViewDelegate> __unsafe_unretained privateDelegate;
    }
    @end

    @implementation UIAlertViewAutoDismiss

    - (id)initWithTitle:(NSString *)title
                message:(NSString *)message
               delegate:(id)delegate
      cancelButtonTitle:(NSString *)cancelButtonTitle
      otherButtonTitles:(NSString *)otherButtonTitles, ...
    {
        self = [super initWithTitle:title
                            message:message
                           delegate:self
                  cancelButtonTitle:cancelButtonTitle
                  otherButtonTitles:nil, nil];

        if (self) {
            va_list args;
            va_start(args, otherButtonTitles);
            for (NSString *anOtherButtonTitle = otherButtonTitles; anOtherButtonTitle != nil; anOtherButtonTitle = va_arg(args, NSString *)) {
                [self addButtonWithTitle:anOtherButtonTitle];
            }
            privateDelegate = delegate;
        }
        return self;
    }

    - (void)dealloc
    {
        privateDelegate = nil;
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification object:nil];
        [super dealloc];
    }

    - (void)setDelegate:(id)delegate
    {
        privateDelegate = delegate;
    }

    - (id)delegate
    {
        return privateDelegate;
    }

    - (void)show
    {
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
                                                 selector:@selector(applicationDidEnterBackground:)
                                                     name:UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification
                                                   object:nil];

        [super show];
    }

    - (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(NSNotification *)notification
    {
        [super dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:[self cancelButtonIndex] animated:NO];
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification object:nil];
    }

    #pragma mark - UIAlertViewDelegate

    // The code below avoids to re-implement all protocol methods to forward to the real delegate.

    - (id)forwardingTargetForSelector:(SEL)aSelector
    {
        struct objc_method_description hasMethod = protocol_getMethodDescription(@protocol(UIAlertViewDelegate), aSelector, NO, YES);
        if (hasMethod.name != NULL) {
            // The method is that of the UIAlertViewDelegate.

            if (aSelector == @selector(alertView:didDismissWithButtonIndex:) ||
                aSelector == @selector(alertView:clickedButtonAtIndex:))
            {
                [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self
                                                                name:UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification
                                                              object:nil];
            }
            return privateDelegate;
        }
        else {
            return [super forwardingTargetForSelector:aSelector];
        }
    }

    @end

It works nicely. It's great, because you can just start using it the same way that you used to use UIAlertView.

I haven't had time to test it thoroughly, but I didn't notice any side effect.

Solution 2

My call would be to add a category to UIAlertview adding the following function :

- (void) hide {
  [self dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:0 animated:YES];
}

And to suscribe to UIApplicationWillResignActiveNotification :

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:alertView selector:@selector(hide) name:@"UIApplicationWillResignActiveNotification" object:nil];

Solution 3

A totally different approach is a recursive search.

Recursive function for your application delegate

- (void)checkViews:(NSArray *)subviews {
    Class AVClass = [UIAlertView class];
    Class ASClass = [UIActionSheet class];
    for (UIView * subview in subviews){
        if ([subview isKindOfClass:AVClass]){
            [(UIAlertView *)subview dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:[(UIAlertView *)subview cancelButtonIndex] animated:NO];
        } else if ([subview isKindOfClass:ASClass]){
            [(UIActionSheet *)subview dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:[(UIActionSheet *)subview cancelButtonIndex] animated:NO];
        } else {
            [self checkViews:subview.subviews];
        }
    }
}

Calling it from the applicationDidEnterBackground procedure

[self checkViews:application.windows];

Solution 4

As someone mentioned in a comment: the accepted answer isn't the best/cleanest one since iOS 4.0 when we have blocks! Here's how I do it:

UIAlertView* alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Alert!" message:@"This alert will dismiss when application resigns active!" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil];
[alert show];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserverForName:UIApplicationWillResignActiveNotification object:nil queue:[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] usingBlock:^(NSNotification* notification){
        [alert dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:0 animated:NO];
    }];

Solution 5

huh. Haven't tried this yet, but I wonder if it would make sense to create a subclass of UIAlertView that listens for this Notification and closes itself if so...

That'd have the "automatically" without retaining / keeping it around characteristic OP is requesting. Make sure to unregister for the notification on close (else boom!)

View more solutions