UIBarButtonItem: target-action not working?

Question

I\'ve got a custom view inside of a UIBarButtonItem, set by calling -initWithCustomView. My bar button item renders fine, but when I tap it, it doe

Answer 1

I had a similar problem. And I initially followed the path suggested by @drawnonward, but then ran into trouble when I tried to have my action present a popover controller on an iPad: Using an embedded UIButton as a custom view means the UIButton is the sender of the event, and the popover controller’s presentPopoverFromBarButtonItem: method crashes when it tries to send it messages which are only appropriate to actual UIBarButtonItems.

The solution I eventually found was to steal the image I wanted to use (the “info” icon) from a throwaway UIButton, and construct my UIBarButtonItem as follows:

// Make the info button use the standard icon and hook it up to work
UIButton *infoButton = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeInfoLight];
UIBarButtonItem *barButton = [[[UIBarButtonItem alloc]        
      initWithImage:infoButton.currentImage
              style:UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered
             target:self
             action:@selector(showInfo:)] autorelease];

Using this initializer yields a bar button whose target and selector actually work. It is also easier than wrapping the image in a custom view, but that is just icing.