How to define the order of overlapping MKAnnotationViews?

Question

I have several MKAnnotations (and their corresponding views) in my map, and it sometimes gets really crowded. Now, the annotations in my app come in two flavors: some are bo

Answer 1

Under iOS 11 the implementation of displayPriority broke all the solutions which use bringSubviewToFront or zPosition.

If you override the annotation view's CALayer, you can wrestle control of zPosition back from the OS.

class AnnotationView: MKAnnotationView {

    /// Override the layer factory for this class to return a custom CALayer class
    override class var layerClass: AnyClass {
        return ZPositionableLayer.self
    }

    /// convenience accessor for setting zPosition
    var stickyZPosition: CGFloat {
        get {
            return (self.layer as! ZPositionableLayer).stickyZPosition
        }
        set {
            (self.layer as! ZPositionableLayer).stickyZPosition = newValue
        }
    }

    /// force the pin to the front of the z-ordering in the map view
   func bringViewToFront() {
        superview?.bringSubviewToFront(toFront: self)
        stickyZPosition = CGFloat(1)
    }

    /// force the pin to the back of the z-ordering in the map view
   func setViewToDefaultZOrder() {
        stickyZPosition = CGFloat(0)
    }

}

/// iOS 11 automagically manages the CALayer zPosition, which breaks manual z-ordering.
/// This subclass just throws away any values which the OS sets for zPosition, and provides
/// a specialized accessor for setting the zPosition
private class ZPositionableLayer: CALayer {

    /// no-op accessor for setting the zPosition
    override var zPosition: CGFloat {
        get {
            return super.zPosition
        }
        set {
            // do nothing
        }
    }

    /// specialized accessor for setting the zPosition
    var stickyZPosition: CGFloat {
        get {
            return super.zPosition
        }
        set {
            super.zPosition = newValue
        }
    }
}