Cannot change the title of the cancel button in the UISearchBar

Question

I would like to change the title of the cancel button of the UISearchBar using MonoTouch. Yes I have seen this "hack" but I prefer a more elegant way. I am trying to use:

UIButton.AppearanceWhenContainedIn(typeof(UISearchBar)).SetTitle("xxxx");

which it is supposed to work in objective-c but in MonoTouch I get the following error

message: Error CS1061: Type MonoTouch.UIKit.UIButton.UIButtonAppearance' does not contain a definition forSetTitle' and no extension method SetTitle' of typeMonoTouch.UIKit.UIButton.UIButtonAppearance' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

I am using Xamarin Studio ver. 4.0

this is a duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15130180/change-text-of-cancel-button-on-a-uisearchbar-using-monotouch — Stephane Delcroix, Mar 01 '13 at 08:16

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:50

It's hackish - the Objective-C code works because the current implementation of UIAppearance use a proxy object. IOW Apple did not promise to keep the implementation identical and that specific feature is not documented.

Now that you're aware of this and if you still want to use it with Xamarin.iOS then you can do it using the hack I described in this Q&A. That will allow you to use any UIButton API on the UIAppearance proxy.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 28 '13 at 13:15

Why not use a bit more lightweight hack?

    public static void SetSearchBarCancelButtonTitle (UISearchBar sb, string title)
    {
        foreach (var subview in sb.Subviews)
            if (subview is UIButton)
                (subview as UIButton).SetTitle (title, UIControlState.Normal);
    }

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 11 '15 at 04:04

UIButton no longer appears to be a direct subView of UISearchBar. You'll have to recurse like the following, until it is found:

        public static bool SetButton(UIView parentView, string title, UIColor tint)
        {
            foreach (var sub in parentView.Subviews)
            {
                if (sub is UIButton)
                {
                    (sub as UIButton).SetTitle(title, UIControlState.Normal);
                    (sub as UIButton).SetTitleColor(tint, UIControlState.Normal);
                    return true;
                }

                if (SetButton(sub, title, tint))
                    return true;
            }

            return false;
        }

Cannot change the title of the cancel button in the UISearchBar

3 Answers3