“Please wait” dialog in iOS8

Question

I used to have a \"Please wait\" dialog in my app for long time. It was quite simple thing using UIActivityIndicatorView and adding it to

Answer 1

Instead of using a UIAlertController, you can use a custom UIViewController that is presented modally. Here is what I use in Swift 2.0:

class ActivityViewController: UIViewController {

    private let activityView = ActivityView()

    init(message: String) {
        super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
        modalTransitionStyle = .CrossDissolve
        modalPresentationStyle = .OverFullScreen
        activityView.messageLabel.text = message
        view = activityView
    }

    required init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }
}

private class ActivityView: UIView {

    let activityIndicatorView = UIActivityIndicatorView(activityIndicatorStyle: .WhiteLarge)
    let boundingBoxView = UIView(frame: CGRectZero)
    let messageLabel = UILabel(frame: CGRectZero)

    init() {
        super.init(frame: CGRectZero)

        backgroundColor = UIColor(white: 0.0, alpha: 0.5)

        boundingBoxView.backgroundColor = UIColor(white: 0.0, alpha: 0.5)
        boundingBoxView.layer.cornerRadius = 12.0

        activityIndicatorView.startAnimating()

        messageLabel.font = UIFont.boldSystemFontOfSize(UIFont.labelFontSize())
        messageLabel.textColor = UIColor.whiteColor()
        messageLabel.textAlignment = .Center
        messageLabel.shadowColor = UIColor.blackColor()
        messageLabel.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(0.0, 1.0)
        messageLabel.numberOfLines = 0

        addSubview(boundingBoxView)
        addSubview(activityIndicatorView)
        addSubview(messageLabel)
    }

    required init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }

    override func layoutSubviews() {
        super.layoutSubviews()

        boundingBoxView.frame.size.width = 160.0
        boundingBoxView.frame.size.height = 160.0
        boundingBoxView.frame.origin.x = ceil((bounds.width / 2.0) - (boundingBoxView.frame.width / 2.0))
        boundingBoxView.frame.origin.y = ceil((bounds.height / 2.0) - (boundingBoxView.frame.height / 2.0))

        activityIndicatorView.frame.origin.x = ceil((bounds.width / 2.0) - (activityIndicatorView.frame.width / 2.0))
        activityIndicatorView.frame.origin.y = ceil((bounds.height / 2.0) - (activityIndicatorView.frame.height / 2.0))

        let messageLabelSize = messageLabel.sizeThatFits(CGSizeMake(160.0 - 20.0 * 2.0, CGFloat.max))
        messageLabel.frame.size.width = messageLabelSize.width
        messageLabel.frame.size.height = messageLabelSize.height
        messageLabel.frame.origin.x = ceil((bounds.width / 2.0) - (messageLabel.frame.width / 2.0))
        messageLabel.frame.origin.y = ceil(activityIndicatorView.frame.origin.y + activityIndicatorView.frame.size.height + ((boundingBoxView.frame.height - activityIndicatorView.frame.height) / 4.0) - (messageLabel.frame.height / 2.0))
    }
}

You use it like this:

let activitiyViewController = ActivityViewController(message: "Loading...")
presentViewController(activitiyViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)

And it will look like this:

Presentation Controller and Animated Transitioning

See this answer for a sample implementation that recreates the UIAlertController animation using UIViewControllerAnimatedTransitioning.