Adding UILabels to UIView dynamically

Question

I have a web service that brings some text data back. The idea is to extract the text and create UILabels for the text to show on screen. I however, do not know two things:

1. How many labels are needed
2. The length of the text

Due to having no prior knowledge of these things I need a way to create some labels that have the right length for the text it contains.

I've managed to store the data into some objects that are in an array and then iterate through them creating the labels.. something like this:

    for (BBItemAttributes *attribute in self.item.productAttributes){

        UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100, 100, 50, 10)];
        label.text = attribute.displayTemplate;
        [self.scrollView addSubview:label];
    }

Obviously the problem here is due to creating the UILabels in code and having each one a hard coded CGRect size they are all onto of each other and sometimes don't fit in their respective boxes due to text being too long.

I need a way to line the labels up all on the same X axis point and on different Y axis points, so that they sit next to each other a certain space apart.

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

Try this. it will help you.

float yAxis = 0;
for (int i = 0; i< 50; i++)//for (BBItemAttributes *attribute in self.item.productAttributes){
{
    CGSize size;
    UIFont *font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:15.0]; // Set Your Font
    //Your String = attribute.displayTemplate

    if (ios7)//Condition to check if ios7
    {
        //iOS 7
        CGRect frame = [@"Your String" boundingRectWithSize:CGSizeMake(50, CGFLOAT_MAX)
                                          options:NSStringDrawingUsesLineFragmentOrigin
                                       attributes:@{NSFontAttributeName:font}
                                          context:nil];
        size = CGSizeMake(frame.size.width, frame.size.height+1);
    }
    else
    {
        //iOS 6.0
        size = [@"Your String" sizeWithFont:font constrainedToSize:CGSizeMake(50, CGFLOAT_MAX) lineBreakMode:NSLineBreakByWordWrapping];
    }
    UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100, yAxis, 50, size.height)];

    label.text = @"Your String";//attribute.displayTemplate
    label.numberOfLines = 0;
    label.tag = i; // Set tag if you want to access in future. :)
    [self.scrollView addSubview:label];

    // Increase yAxis
    yAxis = yAxis + size.height + 10;//10 is extra space if you want between two label
}

// Do Not forget to set Contentsize of your ScrollView.
self.scrollView.contentSize = CGSizeMake(320, yAxis + 20);

Answer 2

If your showing a data structure that is a like a list of labels, I would suggest that you use UITableViewController for showing the list.It has the built in facility and properties that make it easy to display a list of objects.

Now the answer to your first Question.You can get the number of labels by determining the number of objects that are in your array. Something like this :

NSInteger *noOfLabels = yourArray.count;

As far as the length of the text is concerned, I suggest not keeping it very lengthy because Labels are not good for lengthy texts. You can however, specify the number of a lines for a particular label in case if it has lengthy text.This will make the text appear in two lines. Though you will have to adjust width and height accordingly.

You can get the text length by doing something similar to this :

NSString *text;
NSInteger *i = (NSInteger*)[text length];

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

You need to do something like this;

CGFloat yOrigin = 100;
CGFloat fixedSpace = 10;
for (BBItemAttributes *attribute in self.item.productAttributes)
{
    UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100, yOrigin, 50, 10)];
    label.text = attribute.displayTemplate;
    label.numberOfLines = 0;
    [label sizeToFit]; // Resizes label to fit the text.
    [self.scrollView addSubview:label];
    yOrigin += label.frame.size.height + fixedSpace; 
 }