How to set target and action for UIBarButtonItem at runtime

Question

Tried this but only works for UIButton:

[btn setTarget:self action:@selector(btnClicked:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

Answer 1

@wp42 It does work today.

A nifty way of doing this in objective-C is adding a category to UIBarButtonItem class:

.h file

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface UIBarButtonItem (addons)

-(void)addTarget:(id)target andAction:(SEL)action;

@end

.m file

#import "UIBarButtonItem+addons.h"

@implementation UIBarButtonItem (addons)

-(void)addTarget:(id)target andAction:(SEL)action{
   [self setTarget:target];
   [self setAction:action];
}

@end

In practice:

[myBtn addTarget:self andAction:@selector(myFunction:)];

Answer 2

Swift 5:

Extract to extensions:

extension UIBarButtonItem {

    static func nextBtn(target: AnyObject, action: Selector) -> UIBarButtonItem {
        let title = "Next"
        return button(title: title, target: target, action: action)
    }

    private static func button(title: String, target: AnyObject, action: Selector) -> UIBarButtonItem {
        return UIBarButtonItem(title: title, style: .done, target: target, action: action)
    }

}

Call in code:

navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = .nextBtn(target: self, action: #selector(rightBarButtonAction))

Action:

@objc func rightBarButtonAction() {
    Swift.print("Button tapped!")
}

Pretty easy to add new buttons to this factory.

Answer 3

If you are programmatically adding the UIBarButtonItem, the best way to set the target and action is to initialize the button with one of the following methods:

UIBarButtonItem *customButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithImage:<#(UIImage)#> style:<#(UIBarButtonItemStyle)#> target:<#(id)#> action:<#(SEL)#>

UIBarButtonItem *customButton = [UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:<#(NSString *)#> style:<#(UIBarButtonItemStyle)#> target:<#(id)#> action:<#(SEL)#>

UIBarButtonItem *customButton = [UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithImage:<#(UIImage *)#> landscapeImagePhone:<#(UIImage *)#> style:<#(UIBarButtonItemStyle)#> target:<#(id)#> action:<#(SEL)#>

Answer 4

  UIBarButtonItem *barListBtn = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem: UIBarButtonSystemItemAdd target:self action:@selector(getTruckStopListAction)];   
    self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = barListBtn;
    [barListBtn release];

Answer 5

If you need this enough times in your code, it's nice to go ahead and extend UIBarButtonItem which I've done below in Swift. :)

import UIKit

extension UIBarButtonItem {
    func addTargetForAction(target: AnyObject, action: Selector) {
        self.target = target
        self.action = action
    }
}

As an example, with self as a UIViewController, you'd simply call:

self.myBarButtonItem.addTargetForAction(self, action: #selector(buttonPressed(_:))