UINavigationBar Touch

Question

I would like to fire an event on touch when a user taps the title of the navigation bar of one of my views.

I\'m at a bit of a loss on whether I can access the view

Answer 1

The UINavigationItem class reference has a titleView property, which you can set to your custom UIView.

In other words, make a subclass of UIView with your touch handlers, and then when you push your navigation item, set that item's titleView property to an instance of your subclass.

Answer 2

None of the other answers worked well for me. Rather than add a gesture to an existing subview of the navigationBar, or replace the titleView, I simply added a clear UIView covering a good portion of the navigationBar...

- (void) setupNavbarGestureRecognizer {
    // recognise taps on navigation bar to hide
    UITapGestureRecognizer *gestureRecognizer = [[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(showHideNavbar)];
    gestureRecognizer.numberOfTapsRequired = 1;
    // create a view which covers most of the tap bar to
    // manage the gestures - if we use the navigation bar
    // it interferes with the nav buttons
    CGRect frame = CGRectMake(self.view.frame.size.width/4, 0, self.view.frame.size.width/2, 44);
    UIView *navBarTapView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:frame];
    [self.navigationController.navigationBar addSubview:navBarTapView];
    navBarTapView.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
    [navBarTapView setUserInteractionEnabled:YES];
    [navBarTapView addGestureRecognizer:gestureRecognizer];
}

Answer 3

Building on this answer and this one, I went with the below "functional" approach, I am not sure it is anymore readable, but I prefer it over breaking out of a loop.

    if let navTitle = self.navigationController?.navigationBar.subviews.first(where: {$0.subviews.first is UILabel}) {
        let gesture = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: action)
        gesture.numberOfTapsRequired = numberOfTapsRequired
        navTitle.isUserInteractionEnabled = true
        navTitle.addGestureRecognizer(gesture)
    }