add background image to UITableViewController in Navigation based app

Question

I have a navigation based app where I push UITableViewControllers onto the stack. I would like to add a background UImage to all of my UITableViewControllers. Not a UIColor, but an UImage. I know how I can do this using a Nib file and setting the UITableView itself to have use [UIColor ClearColor], but I don't want to go through all my UITableViewControllers and change them to using Nib files, etc.

I also found this solution which would be great if I was just using a single tableviewcontroller in my app. I think there might be a way to make this work, by adding a subview "below" my table view that is created by default in a UITableViewController?

Any suggestions would be great.

Answer 1

It's a little different in a navigation based app: just change the background of the navigation view that each table view is sitting on. Placing the following code in viewDidLoad of each UITableViewController works:

self.navigationController.view.backgroundColor = 
[UIColor colorWithPatternImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"myImage.png"]];
self.tableView.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];

But you may only need to do it once, at the top level of the navigation controller, rather than in each tableview controller (although you'll still have to set each background to clear).

Answer 2

On iOS6 use this:

UIImageView *boxBackView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"TextureBoxboard.jpg"]];
[self.tableView setBackgroundView:boxBackView];

Answer 3

If your class is a UIViewController subclass then you can do it like this:

[self.view setBackgroundColor:
     [UIColor colorWithPatternImage:
      [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:
       [[[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath] stringByAppendingPathComponent:
        @"background.png"]]]];

Answer 4

UIImageView *backgroundView = 
  [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"background.png"]];
backgroundView.frame = CGRectMake(0, 
                                  0, 
                               self.navigationController.view.frame.size.width, 
                               self.navigationController.view.frame.size.height);
backgroundView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth | 
                                  UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight;
[self.navigationController.view insertSubview:backgroundView atIndex:0];
[backgroundView release];
self.tableView.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];

As Gorm said

only need to do it once, at the top level of the UINavigationController

Answer 5

The answer given my Madhup is the correct answer. UITableViewController is a subclass of UIViewController, so adding that to your UITableViewController's viewDidLoad method works great.

Answer 6

As of iOS 3.2, -[UITableView setBackgroundView:] exists, which may be easier than some of the other proposed solutions going forward.