Handling Touch Event in UILabel and hooking it up to an IBAction

Question

Ok, so I have a UILabel created in interface builder that displays some some default text of "tap to begin".

When the user taps the UILabel I want it to trigger an IBAction method: -(IBAction)next; which updates the text on the label to say something new.
It would be really convenient if this allowed me to simply drag a connection from my method to my label and then select touch up inside, as with a button. but alas, no cigar.

so anyways, I guess my question is, am I going to have to subclass UILabel to get this to work? Or is there some way I can drag a button over the label, but make it 0% opaque. Or is there a simpler solution I'm missing?

Answer 1

Check it out:

UILabel *label = ...
label.userInteractionEnabled = YES;
UITapGestureRecognizer *tapGesture =
      [[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self 
                                              action:@selector(labelTap)];
[label addGestureRecognizer:tapGesture];

The trick is to enable user interaction.

Answer 2

UILabel inherits from UIView which inherits from UIResponder. All UIresponder objects can handle touch events. So in your class file which knows about your view (which contains the UIlabel) implement:

-(void)touchesBegan:(NSSet*)touches withEvent:(UIEvent*)event;

In interface builder set the UILabel's tag value. when touches occur in your touchesBegan method, check the tag value of the view to which the tag belongs:

UITouch *touch = [touches anyObject];

if(touch.view.tag == MY_TAG_VAL)
label.text = @"new text";

You connect your code in your class file with the UILabel object in interface builder by declaring your UILabel instance variable with the IBOutlet prefix:

IBOutlet UILabel *label;

Then in interface builder you can connect them up.

Answer 3

You can use a UIButton, make it transparent, i.e. custom type without an image, and add a UILabel on it (centered). Then wire up the normal button events.

Answer 4

Swift 3

You have an IBOutlet

@IBOutlet var label: UILabel!

In which you enable user interaction and add a gesture recognizer

label.isUserInteractionEnabled = true
let tapGesture = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(userDidTapLabel(tapGestureRecognizer:)))
label.addGestureRecognizer(tapGesture)

And finally, handle the tap

func userDidTapLabel(tapGestureRecognizer: UITapGestureRecognizer) {
  // Your code goes here
}