How can I set a button background color on iPhone?

Question

How can I set a custom background color of a button?

Interface Builder doesn\'t seem to have an interface to do this.

Is it only available programmatically

Answer 1

So, I found an incredibly simple solution using categories. (So simple that I think I must be doing something hacky, but I don't see it!)

Define a category (if you don't know what that is, in summary: it is a way to "extend" a class minimally; that is, to add methods to a class but no properties) for UIButton, and create a method "setBackgroundColor" that calls UIButton's super class' (UIControl) setBackgroundColor method.

@implementation UIButton (coloredBackgroundButton)

-(void)setBackgroundColor:(UIColor *)backgroundColor {
    [super setBackgroundColor:backgroundColor];
}

Wherever you use UIButtons, as long as you import the header file in which this category is declared, in this case,

#import "coloredBackgroundButton.h" 

you can call setBackgroundColor on them.