UISearchController SearchBar misaligns while active during rotation

Question

I have been struggling with UISearchController's search bar for quite a while now. I need a search feature to be implemented on a tableview but unlike conventional methods, I didn't put the search bar on a table header view. Instead, I created a UIView and added the search bar as a subview to it. The UIView which acts as a container to search bar has its constraints properly set on the storyboard with auto layout.

Here are my codes for it. Note that I did this programmatically because UISearchDisplayController and UISearchBar has been deprecated as of iOS 8 in favour of UISearchController and has yet to come to UIKit.

searchController = UISearchController(searchResultsController: nil)
searchController.searchResultsUpdater = self
searchController.dimsBackgroundDuringPresentation = false
searchController.searchBar.autoresizingMask = .FlexibleRightMargin
searchController.searchBar.delegate = self
definesPresentationContext = true
self.searchContainerView.addSubview(searchController.searchBar)

However, I did notice one odd behaviour of the search bar during rotation. When it is active on Portrait, I rotate the simulator to Landscape, and press Cancel, the search bar goes back to Portrait Width.

The same happens the other way around too.

I would appreciate any ideas or maybe some hints towards the correct direction to solve this as I have been at this for days at least. Thank you very much

Answer 1

So after so many days of struggling with this:

Portrait to Landscape

1. Make SearchBar/SearchController active in Portrait
2. Rotate to Landscape
3. Press Cancel and SearchBar will go back to Portrait width

Landscape to Potrait

1. Make SearchBar/SearchController active in Landscape
2. Rotate to Portrait
3. Press Cancel and SearchBar will go back to Landscape width

I finally solved it on my own. It seems that when a user presses Cancel on the SearchBar, the ViewController will call viewDidLayoutSubviews thus I tried to reset the width by calling this function in viewDidLayoutSubviews:

func setupSearchBarSize(){
     self.searchController.searchBar.frame.size.width = self.view.frame.size.width
}

But that didn't work as well as I thought. So here is what I think happens. When a user activates the SearchController/SearchBar, the SearchController saves the current frame before it resizes itself. Then when a user presses Cancel or dismisses it, it will use the saved frame and resize to that frame size.

So in order to force its width to be realigned when I press Cancel, I have to implement the UISearchControllerDelegate in my VC and detect when the SearchController is dismissed, and call setupSearchBarSize() again.

Here are the relevant codes to solve this question:

class HomeMainViewController : UIViewController, UISearchControllerDelegate, UISearchResultsUpdating, UITableViewDelegate, UITableViewDataSource, UISearchBarDelegate {
    @IBOutlet weak var searchContainerView: UIView!

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

        searchController = UISearchController(searchResultsController: nil)
        searchController.searchResultsUpdater = self
        searchController.dimsBackgroundDuringPresentation = false
        searchController.searchBar.autoresizingMask = .FlexibleRightMargin
        searchController.searchBar.delegate = self
        searchController.delegate = self
        definesPresentationContext = true
        self.searchContainerView.addSubview(searchController.searchBar)
        setupSearchBarSize()
}

func setupSearchBarSize(){
        self.searchController.searchBar.frame.size.width = self.view.frame.size.width
}

func didDismissSearchController(searchController: UISearchController) {
        setupSearchBarSize()
}

override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
        setupSearchBarSize()
 }
}

Answer 2

Here is simpler solution:

override func viewWillTransition(to size: CGSize, with coordinator: UIViewControllerTransitionCoordinator) {
        super.viewWillTransition(to: size, with: coordinator)

        coordinator.animate(alongsideTransition: { (context) in
            self.searchController.searchBar.frame.size.width = self.view.frame.size.width
        }, completion: nil)
    }