iphone keyboard without textview

Question

is it possible to bring up the keyboard in an iphone app without a textview? or will i have to have an invisible textview?

if so, how do you programatically create a

Answer 1

UIKeyInput is your friend:

protocol KeyboardInputControlDelegate: class {
    func keyboardInputControl( keyboardInputControl:KeyboardInputControl, didPressKey key:Character)
}

class KeyboardInputControl: UIControl, UIKeyInput {

    // MARK: - properties

    weak var delegate: KeyboardInputControlDelegate?

    // MARK: - init

    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame: frame)

        addTarget(self, action: Selector("onTouchUpInside:"), forControlEvents: .TouchUpInside)
    }

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

    // MARK: - UIView

    override func canBecomeFirstResponder() -> Bool {
        return true
    }

    // MARK: - methods

    dynamic private func onTouchUpInside(sender: KeyboardInputControl) {
        becomeFirstResponder()
    }

    // MARK: - UIKeyInput

    var text:String = ""

    func hasText() -> Bool {
        return text.isEmpty
    }

    func insertText(text: String) {
        self.text = text
        for ch in text {
            delegate?.keyboardInputControl(self, didPressKey: ch)
        }
    }

    func deleteBackward() {
        if !text.isEmpty {
            let newText = text[text.startIndex..

Example usage. Tap the red view and see the Xcode console output:

class ViewController: UIViewController, KeyboardInputControlDelegate {

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        let kic = KeyboardInputControl(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 100, height: 100))
        kic.delegate = self
        kic.backgroundColor = UIColor.redColor()
        view.addSubview(kic)
    }

    func keyboardInputControl(keyboardInputControl: KeyboardInputControl, didPressKey key: Character) {
        println("Did press: \(key)")
    }
}