This may not be the best solution, but it definitely works. First off, I tried a number of things, like observing for context and such, but I never got past crashing, and it seemed cumbersome. So, this is what I did:
I first specified what the controlling factor was for keeping an alert viewable. In my case, I created a custom annotation view, and whenever the user clicks a button on that custom view, I want it to stay visible, and maybe even change the content. So, I set a delegate on that custom view so that my map can know when something changes. In my map view controller, I catch that message and set a class member variable to true to signify that I want the annotation view to stay.
NOTE: This will happen before the selection messages occur.
Now, in my didDeselectAnnotation method, I check the boolean value. If I want to keep it visible, I opt to NOT remove my annotation, I reset the boolean value, and I re-select the annotation manually, setting animation to NO. This lets the annotation view "stay" visible--maybe a cheat, but the user can't see the difference. Whenever that boolean value says that deselection is ok, I simply remove the annotation and all is well.
So, the workflow is this:
- Touch pin
- CustomAnnotationView is displayed
- User clicks a button on CustomAnnotationView, which notifies the delegate (mapView) that the
action occurred
- Set the class boolean value to know that you want to keep the annotation around
- mapView then calls didDeselectAnnotation method
- In didDeselectAnnotation method, use conditional to decide if you should remove the annotation, or keep it around by not removing the annotation and manually re-selecting it without animation.
I hope this helps others. It took me a while to figure this out, so I hope it saves you time.
If you find a better solution, by all means, please post it here!