Use iOS SwipeGesture To Cycle through UIButtons

Question

I have 6 UIButtons set up in my UIView, all in the exact same location. What I want to do, is to swipe from left to right or right to left, in order to go through the buttons.

I have the UIGestures all set up and working on the view, I am just not sure the best way to go about cycling through these UIButtons.

I was thinking that it could be simple enough to tag each UIButton and HIDE all but one, but am not sure about the best way to loop through these.

Answer 1

Just put them in an NSMutableArray and whatever button is at index 0 is the visible one, as they swipe you'd remove the button at index 0, set it to hidden = YES and add it to the end of the array then set the button at index 0's hidden = NO.

Assuming you're using ARC, inside your class' implementation (.m) file:

@interface MyFancyButtonClass () {
    NSMutableArray *_swipeButtons;
}

inside your viewDidLoad:

_swipeButtons = [NSMutableArray arrayWithObjects:buttonOne, buttonTwo, buttonThree, buttonFour, nil];
buttonOne.hidden = NO;
buttonTwo.hidden = buttonThree.hidden = buttonFour.hidden = YES;

inside your gestureRecognizer:

UIButton *currentVisibleButton = [_swipeButtons firstObject];
UIButton *nextVisibleButton = [_swipeButtons objectAtIndex:1];

[_swipeButtons removeObject:currentVisibleButton];
[_swipeButtons addObject:currentVisibleButton];

currentVisibleButton.hidden = YES;
nextVisibleButton.hidden = NO;

Answer 2

Create a NSMutableArray like this:

NSMutableArray * buttons = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
[buttons addObject:button1];
[buttons addObject:button2];
[buttons addObject:button3];
[buttons addObject:button4];
[buttons addObject:button5];

Save this array to a property like this

self.buttons = buttons;

Store the currentButton Like this:

int currentButton = 0;

Get the current button like this:

UIButton * currentSelectedButton = buttons[currentButton];

Cycle through the buttons like this:

UIButton * currentSelectedButton = buttons[currentButton];
currentSelectedButton.hidden = YES;
currentButton++;
if (currentButton >= self.buttons.count)
    currentButton = 0;
currentSelectedButton = buttons[currentButton];
currentSelectedButton.hidden = NO;