Keeping text in an alert view, and saving text to an NSString?

Question

I have a UITableView that is meant have a list of names. I want it to bring up an UIAlertView whenever a name is clicked, so that the accompanying information to the name (for now just the age) will be allowed to be changed.

As of now, I can get an alertView with a UITextField to appear, however once you close the alertView, the text inside the UITextField resets to the placeholder. How can I get the text to stay with the UIAlertView?

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView 
        didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    UIAlertView *alert = 
    [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Set Age" 
                               message:[_tableData1 objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] 
                              delegate:nil 
                     cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" 
                     otherButtonTitles:nil];

    alert.alertViewStyle = UIAlertViewStylePlainTextInput;
    UITextField *textField = [alert textFieldAtIndex:0];
    textField.placeholder = @"18";
    [alert show];
}

Also, how can I get the text from the UIAlertView, and save it as a NSString?

Thank you!

Answer 1

You need to set your view controller as the delegate and then retrieve the value in the callback. You also need to add UIAlertViewDelegate to your @interface

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Set Age" message:[_tableData1 objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil];

    alert.alertViewStyle = UIAlertViewStylePlainTextInput;
    UITextField *textField = [alert textFieldAtIndex:0];
    textField.placeholder = @"18";
    [alert show];
}


-(void)alertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView didDismissWithButtonIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex {
    if(buttonIndex == alertView.cancelButtonIndex) {
        return;
    }

    NSString * yourString = [alertView textFieldAtIndex:0].text

}