How would you program a Continuous Delete Button?

Question

I'm making a calculator app and am supplying my own keypad with UIButtons. I have a delete key and everything works except that the user has to keep pressing the delete key over and over again if they want to delete all.

I was wondering if there is a way to delete everything when the button is held for more than 2 seconds.

This is missing important details. How do you store the number? How do you currently delete the last digit? — Matthias Bauch, Mar 16 '13 at 08:03
When the user pressed a number key, it will put into a UILabel at the top and the delete key just deletes one character from the end of the UILabel.text. — OnkaPlonka, Mar 16 '13 at 08:04
If you use longpress gesture I hope you may achieve that functionality. — Exploring, Mar 16 '13 at 08:10

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

The simplest way of implementing this would be attaching a long press gesture recognizer to your [Delete] button.

Xcode lets you attach long press gesture recognizer in the interface builder. Add it to your button, configure the duration of long press, and connect the handler to IBOutlet in the same way that you connect other UI events.

If you would rather do it in code, this answer shows you how.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 16 '13 at 08:04

2

Use your own timer function to handle this

-(IBAction)buttonHit {
    //here start timer that fires for every 2 seconds and handle deletion method in that
}

-(IBAction)buttonReleased {
   //Stop timer...
}

answered Mar 16 '13 at 08:04

Guru

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Thanks but this didn't really help me – OnkaPlonka Mar 16 '13 at 08:10
better check out this: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSTimer_Class/Reference/NSTimer.html – Guru Mar 16 '13 at 08:13

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 16 '13 at 08:03

1

In your subclassed UIButton, you might want to watch the "touchesBegan: withEvent:" UIResponder method and if it passes a certain threshold of time, then start deleting like crazy (that is, until the "touchesEnded: withEvent" method gets called).

answered Mar 16 '13 at 08:03

Michael Dautermann

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Thanks but i haven't subclassed it and would prefer not to – OnkaPlonka Mar 16 '13 at 08:11

How would you program a Continuous Delete Button?

3 Answers3