How can I find the UIView for a specific UITabBarItem?

15
votes

I am using an external library called SwiftyWalkthrough, which allows me to expose only certain views on the screen to guide a new user through my app's UI. The first item I want exposed to the user is a UITabBarItem. I need to find the UIView associated with that specific UITabBarItem. I know the index for the item, and I have given it a tag. But I haven't found a way for them to help me find the view. Of course, I only want to use public interfaces to accomplish this.

3
iosswiftuiviewuitabbaritem
There are many views in the tab bar item. which one are u looking for? – Teja Nandamuri
The one that encloses the title and icon on the tab bar at the bottom of the screen. I expect it to be rectangular, having a height identical to the entire tab bar, and a width equal to the tab bar width divided by the number of tab bar items. – Carl Smith
i think there is no access to the UITabbaritem backgroundView, we can only put the custom image for the tab bar item, but cannot get the backgroundView for the tabbar item. – Teja Nandamuri

3 Answers

32
votes

I solved my problem by accessing the subviews of the tabBar. The views with userInteractionEnabled are UITabBarItems. Sorting them by their minX values guarantees that they are in the same order as the tabBar.items array.

extension UITabBarController {
    func orderedTabBarItemViews() -> [UIView] {
        let interactionViews = tabBar.subviews.filter({$0.isUserInteractionEnabled})
    return interactionViews.sorted(by: {$0.frame.minX < $1.frame.minX})
    }
}
9
votes

Swift 3 version of for Carl Smith's answer

func orderedTabBarItemViews() -> [UIView] {
    let interactionViews = tabBar.subviews.filter({$0.isUserInteractionEnabled})
    return interactionViews.sorted(by: {$0.frame.minX < $1.frame.minX})
}
4
votes

Tested in iOS10 with Objective-C:

[alert setModalPresentationStyle:UIModalPresentationPopover];

    UIView *view = [self.tabBar.selectedItem valueForKey:@"view"];

    alert.popoverPresentationController.delegate = self;
    alert.popoverPresentationController.sourceView = self.tabBar;
    alert.popoverPresentationController.sourceRect = view.frame;
    alert.popoverPresentationController.permittedArrowDirections = UIPopoverArrowDirectionDown;

    [self presentViewController:alert animated:YES completion:nil];