Adding buttons to toolbar programmatically in swift

Question

I'm having a hard time adding a button to the toolbar in swift, below you can see an image of the toolbar that I'm after, unfortunately even though I have it designed in my Storyboard file, it doesn't show up when setting the toolbar to be visible.

The way that I have designed this is two items, the first being a flexable space element, and the second being an add element. It looks like this:

Here's the code that I've used to attempt to replicate this in code:

self.navigationController?.toolbarHidden = false
self.navigationController?.toolbarItems = [UIBarButtonItem]()
self.navigationController?.toolbarItems?.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .FlexibleSpace, target: self, action: nil)
)
self.navigationController?.toolbarItems?.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .Add, target: self, action: "onClickedToolbeltButton:")
)

As you can see I'm setting the toolbar to be visible, initializing (and clearing) the toolbarItems array of UIBarButtonItem, and then adding two UIBarButtonItem's to the array, in the proper order.

However, the toolbelt remains empty, why is this?

David Seek · Answer 1 · 2017-12-13T15:51:25.607

44

None of the above worked for me, but:

Swift 3 / Swift 4

self.navigationController?.isToolbarHidden = false

var items = [UIBarButtonItem]()

items.append( UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .flexibleSpace, target: self, action: nil) )
items.append( UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .add, target: self, action: #selector(add)) ) // replace add with your function

self.toolbarItems = items // this made the difference. setting the items to the controller, not the navigationcontroller

edited Dec 13 '17 at 15:51

answered Sep 21 '17 at 03:26

David Seek

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5

This works, but the real question is what are the rest of them doing? – Allison Jun 04 '18 at 23:51
Those who scroll down will be rewarded. Thank you. – biomiker Nov 13 '18 at 22:36
This should be the accepted answer instead, but yes, what makes it different from the accepted answer? – Takasur Aug 24 '19 at 14:40

score 22 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 26 '19 at 01:50

22

The usual way to do that is to create the array of toolbar items and then assign the array to the items property of the toolbar.

self.navigationController?.isToolbarHidden = false
var items = [UIBarButtonItem]()
items.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .flexibleSpace, target: nil, action: nil)
)
items.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .add, target: self, action: #selector(onClickedToolbeltButton(_:)))
)
toolbarItems = items

edited Sep 26 '19 at 01:50

iwasrobbed

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answered Jan 30 '16 at 19:30

vadian

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If action is nil, why do you need to set target as self? – BangOperator Oct 06 '17 at 12:44
as @DavidSeek mentioned, `self.toolbarItems` on `UIViewController` is the right way to set toolbar buttons. – Yassine ElBadaoui Nov 26 '18 at 14:20
Oh, just know navigationController has a build-in `toolbar`, I created my own `toolbar` and set its constraints programmatically before, what a miss:) – Zhou Haibo Dec 10 '20 at 05:05

Ulysses · Answer 3 · 2016-01-31T00:06:02.363

self.navigationController?.toolbarItems = items

self.navigationController?.setToolbarItems(items, animated: false)

self.navigationController?.toolbar.setItems(items, animated: false)

Try it.

        self.navigationController?.toolbarHidden = false
        var items = [UIBarButtonItem]()
        items.append(
            UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .FlexibleSpace, target: self, action: nil)
        )
        items.append(
            UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .Add, target: self, action: "onClickedToolbeltButton:")
        )

        self.navigationController?.toolbar.setItems(items, animated: false)

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 29 '16 at 20:00

2

Here is an example with MKUserTrackingBarButtonItem:

navigationController?.toolbarHidden = false
let barButtonItem = MKUserTrackingBarButtonItem(mapView: self.mapView)
self.toolbarItems = [barButtonItem]

answered Jul 29 '16 at 20:00

damianesteban

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 10 '17 at 14:45

Updated answer using the current selector syntax for

Swift 3

var barButtons = [UIBarButtonItem]()
barButtons.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .done, target: self, action: #selector(ThisViewController.onDoneBarButtonClick))
)
self.navigationItem.setRightBarButtonItems(barButtons, animated: false)

You can place this code in any loading event. It works seamless for me in viewDidLoad().

Replace "ThisViewController.onDoneBarButtonClick" with your view controller class name and any method you want to write to manage the toolbar button click.

score -1 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 31 '16 at 21:07

let addButton = UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: UIBarButtonSystemItem.Add, target: self, action: "addSomething:")
toolbarItems = [UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .FlexibleSpace, target: self, action: nil),addButton]
self.navigationController!.setToolbarHidden(false, animated: false)

Adding buttons to toolbar programmatically in swift

6 Answers6

Swift 3

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