How can you add a UIGestureRecognizer to a UIBarButtonItem as in the common undo/redo UIPopoverController scheme on iPad apps?

Question

Problem

In my iPad app, I cannot attach a popover to a button bar item only after press-and-hold events. But this seems to be standard for

Answer 1

I know it is not the best solution, but I am going to post a rather easy solution that worked for me.

I have created a simple extension for UIBarButtonItem:

fileprivate extension UIBarButtonItem {
    var view: UIView? {
        return value(forKey: "view") as? UIView
    }
    func addGestureRecognizer(_ gestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) {
        view?.addGestureRecognizer(gestureRecognizer)
    }
}

After this, you can simply add your gesture recognizers to the items in your ViewController's viewDidLoad method:

@IBOutlet weak var myBarButtonItem: UIBarButtonItem!

func setupLongPressObservation() {
    let recognizer = UILongPressGestureRecognizer(
        target: self, action: #selector(self.didLongPressMyBarButtonItem(recognizer:)))
    myBarButtonItem.addGestureRecognizer(recognizer)
}