How to programmatically add text to a UIView

Question

I have a UIView that I'd like to add several bits of text to. I have used a UITextView but I think that's overkill as it doesn't need to be editable. I thought about using a UILabel or a UITextField, but I don't see how you tell the superview where to position the UILabel or UITextField within itself. I want the lowest footprint object that will let me put text of a font/color/size of my choosing in my UIView where I want it. Not too much to ask, eh?

Answer 1

The simplest approach for you would be:

UILabel *yourLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(10, 10, 300, 20)];

[yourLabel setTextColor:[UIColor blackColor]];
[yourLabel setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
[yourLabel setFont:[UIFont fontWithName: @"Trebuchet MS" size: 14.0f]]; 
[yourSuperView addSubview:yourLabel];

Building or populating Views in your code will probably require you to use CGRectMake a lot. As its name says, it creates a rectangle that you can use to set the relative position (relative to the borders of your superview) and size of your UIView-Subclass (in this case a UILabel).

It works like this:

yourLabel.Frame = CGRectMake(x, y, width, height); //x,y,width,height are float values.

x defines the spacing between the left hand border of the superview and the beginning of the subview your about to add, same applies to y but relating to the spacing between top-border of your superview. then width and height are self-explanatory i think.

Hope this gets you on the track.

Answer 2

Instead of finding a way to tell the view where to position the UILabel, you can tell the UILabel where to position itself in the view by using "center".

E.g.

myLabel.center = CGPointMake(0.0, 0.0);

Hope you'll be able to use UILabel, for me it's the basic form of a flexible non editable text.

Answer 3

For Swift:

    let yourLabel = UILabel(frame: CGRectMake(100, 100, 100, 100))
    yourLabel.textColor = UIColor.whiteColor()
    yourLabel.backgroundColor = UIColor.blackColor()
    yourLabel.text = "mylabel text"
    yoursuperview.addSubview(yourLabel)

Answer 4

This question is old, but for a pure UIView text option without using UILabel or UITextField (as all the other answers describe, but the question is how to do it without them), drawRect in a subclassed UIView works for me. Like so:

 - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect{
     NSString *string = @"Hello World!";
     [string drawAtPoint:CGPointMake(100, 100) withFont:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:16.0]];
 }

Answer 5

This routine displays a text at a X-Y position

-(void)placeText:(NSString *)theText:(int)theX:(int)theY {
    UILabel *textLabel;

    // Set font and calculate used space
    UIFont *textFont = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica" size:14];
    CGSize textStringSize = [theText sizeWithFont:textFont constrainedToSize:CGSizeMake(300,50) lineBreakMode:NSLineBreakByTruncatingTail];

    // Position of the text
    textLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(theX+OFFSETIMAGEX-(textStringSize.width/2), theY+OFFSETIMAGEY-(textStringSize.height/2), textStringSize.width,textStringSize.height)];

    // Set text attributes
    textLabel.textColor = [UIColor blackColor];
    textLabel.backgroundColor = [UIColor orangeColor];
    textLabel.font = textFont;
    textLabel.text = theText;

    // Display text
    [self.view addSubview:textLabel];
}

Answer 6

It might be late but here is what I use:-

CGRect labelFrame = CGRectMake(120,300, 530, 100);
UILabel *myLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:labelFrame];
//If you need to change the color
[myLabel setTextColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];
//If you need to change the system font
[myLabel setFont:[UIFont fontWithName:NULL size:23]];
//If you need alignment
[myLabel setTextAlignment:NSTextAlignmentCenter];
// The label will use an unlimited number of lines
[myLabel setNumberOfLines:0];
//Add label view to current view
[self.view addSubview:myLabel];
NSString *someString = @"Sample String, Yarp!";
myLabel.text = someString;

Answer 7

add a UILabel to your View. then override the View's layoutSubviews method.