Detecting iOS UIDevice orientation

Question

I need to detect when the device is in portrait orientation so that I can fire off a special animation. But I do not want my view to autorotate.

How do I override a

Answer 1

1) Swift version of David's answer 2) In case you still want to detect orientation when there's no orientation change (Swift vesion of Moe's answer to How Do I detect the orientation of the device on iOS?)

    // Initial device orientation
    let orientation: UIInterfaceOrientation = UIApplication.sharedApplication().statusBarOrientation
    if(orientation == UIInterfaceOrientation.Unknown){
        // code for Unknown
    }
    else if(orientation == UIInterfaceOrientation.Portrait){
        // code for Portrait
    }
    else if(orientation == UIInterfaceOrientation.PortraitUpsideDown){
        // code for Portrait
    }
    else if(orientation == UIInterfaceOrientation.LandscapeRight){
        // code for Landscape        
    }
    else if(orientation == UIInterfaceOrientation.LandscapeLeft){
        // ode for Landscape
    }

    // To detect device orientation change
    UIDevice.currentDevice().beginGeneratingDeviceOrientationNotifications()
    NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(
        self,
        selector: "orientationChanged:",
        name: UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification,
        object: UIDevice.currentDevice())

orientationChanged function

func orientationChanged(note: NSNotification)
{
    let device: UIDevice = note.object as! UIDevice
    switch(device.orientation)
    {
        case UIDeviceOrientation.Portrait:
        // code for Portrait
        break
        case UIDeviceOrientation.PortraitUpsideDown:
        // code for Portrait
        break
        case UIDeviceOrientation.LandscapeLeft:
        // code for Landscape
        break
        case UIDeviceOrientation.LandscapeRight:
        // code for Landscape
        break
        case UIDeviceOrientation.Unknown:
        // code for Unknown
        break
        default:
        break
    }
}