How to resign first responder from text field when user tap elsewhere?

Question

I have filled my view with ScrollView (same size as the view) and I'm stuck at how to resign first responder when user tap elsewhere in the View (or the scrollview). Any idea on how to do that ? I'm using the following method but it's not working as expected:

- (BOOL)textFieldShouldEndEditing:(UITextField *)textField
{
    [textField resignFirstResponder];
    return YES;
}

Thx for helping,

Stephane

Solution 1

I found the answer here:

If your ultimate aim is just to resign the first responder, this should work: [self.view endEditing:YES]

The endEditing(_:) method is designed right for it

Causes the view (or one of its embedded text fields) to resign the first responder status.

Solution 2

For a more robust and clean solution add a tap gesture recognizer to your primary view.

This will work better with nested views and will be cleaner than secret buttons in code and UI builder.

In your view did load:

UITapGestureRecognizer* tapBackground = [[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(dismissKeyboard:)];
[tapBackground setNumberOfTapsRequired:1];
[self.view addGestureRecognizer:tapBackground];

..and define your target action to be triggered on tap:

-(void) dismissKeyboard:(id)sender
{
    [self.view endEditing:YES];
}

Solution 3

Using Swift you can do this:

func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    let tap: UITapGestureRecognizer = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(self.hideKeyboardByTappingOutside))
    
    self.view.addGestureRecognizer(tap)
}

@objc func hideKeyboardByTappingOutside() {
    self.view.endEditing(true)
}

Solution 4

The best option is the shortest way ;)

- (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
    [self.view endEditing:YES];
}

Solution 5

UIViewController inherits from UIResponder so a naive way (I am pretty sure is not the smartest way to do it) would be by overwriting the following methods (at least 1 of them)

– touchesBegan:withEvent:
– touchesMoved:withEvent:
– touchesEnded:withEvent:
- touchesCancelled:withEvent:

Next you could get the touched view by doing

UITouch *touch = [touches anyObject];
UIView *touchedView = [touch view];

finally resign the first responder if that view is not your text field

if(touchedView != textField){
    [textField resignFirstResponder];
}

_

Demerits of this approach:

You will have to handle the "tap" by yourself. (Same problem as the old iOS 3.1 or earlier). You will have to come up with your own implementation to differentiate single taps from drags, swipes, double taps, long taps, etc. Is not hard to get it working well but it is not likely you get it exactly the same way Apple detects taps (timings, distances, thresholds count!) However, that depends on your needs.

If your view structure is simple enough then you could add a gesture recognizer to the container view and resign the first responder every time the handler is called :)

Hope this helps

View more solutions

Comments

[user523234]

Make sure you have <UITextFieldDelegate> this is your interface file.

[Steve]

I added it this is why I'm using the textFieldShouldEndEditing method

[Loukas]

possible duplicate of Easy way to dismiss keyboard?

[Steve]

IBOulet is to access interface object properties. What I want is to let my view controller know when a specific event occurs on a text field. An event like "mouseout" when using Javascript. Objective C seems poor at these simple things lol

[Or Ron]

in order to resign first responder, that is exactly what u need an IBOutlet for the textfield. If you want to get this method called you should set your viewcontroller as the textFields delegate.

[Or Ron]

Furthermore, sometimes users will want to exit from "editing" mode without pressing any button, they are used to it. you should catch touches on the background and use again either IBOutlet or pointer to this text field and make him resign first responder.

[Or Ron]

And by the way, the point of this button is to vote whether my comment is totally irrelevant or nonsense and not if you believe I misinterpreted your question. Next time just learn to leave a comment.

[Steve]

Thx for commeting. It's not me who downvoted your reply! Sorry for late reply to your comments The thing is IBOulet does not respond to events but IBAction do. What I'm looking is an event/delegate method.

[Tom Redman]

This is a much better solution than calling each individual input's resignFirstResponder method.

[PassKit]

Great solution, and much cleaner than a button hack.

[Andres Canella]

Thanks @PassKit, we tend to layer on a lot of custom UI. The simpler & cleaner the better:)

[strange]

The correct solution is offered by DanSkeel below, and really should be marked as the accepted answer.

[LEAD2M]

This is an easy way, but this could lead unwanted impact on gestures of other objects.

[Andres Canella]

In what case specifically?

[Haagenti]

Instead of resign all fields, can't you just can [self endEditing:YES];

[Recycled Steel]

Although this may (note may as I am not sure) take a little longer to execute than other methods it is very handy when needing to resign the firstResponder from a Class where the current VC is not known and so is probably quicker than finding it and so on.

[ToolmakerSteve]

@RecycledSteel - given that iOS must always know the current firstResponder, I see no reason why this would be slow.

[ToolmakerSteve]

But where put this line of code, so that a tap anywhere (outside of field being edited) executes it?

[DanSkeel]

@ToolmakerSteve e.g. you can add this code to the method that handles tap of UITapGestureRecognizer added to ViewController's view.

[huggie]

This hinders UITableViewDelegate being called when user select a cell.

[Adrian]

@AlexZavatone You just put it where you need it to go. If you want to do it when the view disappears, put it in viewDidDisappear. Or perhaps you want to do it when a button is clicked, so you'd put it in the code for your button action.

[Mike Irving]

Much better than hidden (transparent) buttons.. and without complicating the interface builder. Thank you.