UI elements not displaying in view controllers that are apart of custom tab bar controller

Question

I am working on an iOS application that has 4 more tabs that the user needs to be able to access. I decided to create my own custom tab bar controller so I would have more options when it comes to customization. I have implemented the custom tab bar controller and am able to switch between views just fine except when I got to add UI elements such as UITextField, UIButton, etc. in my view controller classes and run the app the UI elements don't show up.

CustomTabBarController.swift

import UIKit

class CustomTabBarController: UITabBarController {

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

        let socialController = socialViewController()
        socialController.navigationItem.title = "Social"
        let navigationController = UINavigationController(rootViewController: socialController)
        navigationController.title = "Social"
        navigationController.tabBarItem.image = UIImage(named: "User-Group-50")

        let mapController = GoogleMapsViewController()
        mapController.navigationItem.title = "Map"
        let MapNavigationController = UINavigationController(rootViewController: mapController)
        MapNavigationController.title = "Map"
        MapNavigationController.tabBarItem.image = UIImage(named: "Map-50")

        let scheduleController = scheduleViewController()
        scheduleController.navigationItem.title = "Schedule"
        let ScheduleNavigationController = UINavigationController(rootViewController: scheduleController)
        ScheduleNavigationController.title = "Schedule"
        ScheduleNavigationController.tabBarItem.image = UIImage(named: "Calendar-50")

        let settingsController = settingsViewController()
        settingsController.navigationItem.title = "Settings"
        let SettingsNavigationController = UINavigationController(rootViewController: settingsController)
        SettingsNavigationController.title = "Settings"
        SettingsNavigationController.tabBarItem.image = UIImage(named: "Settings-50")

        viewControllers = [navigationController, MapNavigationController, ScheduleNavigationController, SettingsNavigationController]

        tabBar.isTranslucent = true

        let topBorder = CALayer()
        topBorder.frame = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 1000, height: 0.5)
        topBorder.backgroundColor = UIColor.white.cgColor
        tabBar.layer.addSublayer(topBorder)
        tabBar.clipsToBounds = true

    }
}

AppDelegate.swift

    func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplicationLaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {
        window = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds)
        window?.makeKeyAndVisible()

        window?.rootViewController = CustomTabBarController()

        UINavigationBar.appearance().barTintColor = UIColor(red: 200/255, green: 0/255, blue: 0/255, alpha: 1)
        UINavigationBar.appearance().titleTextAttributes = [NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.white]

        UITabBar.appearance().tintColor = UIColor(red: 51/255, green: 90/255, blue: 149/255, alpha: 1)

        application.statusBarStyle = .lightContent

        // Override point for customization after application launch.
        return true
    }

I try and add a UITextField using:

var textField: UITextField

But when I launch my app the textField doesn't show up in the view.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 04 '16 at 00:23

Simply writing var textField: UITextField won't create a textField.

You need to initialize it, generally with a frame, and then add it to the view. It should look something like this:

var textField: UITextField = UITextField(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 100, length: 100))

override func viewDidLoad(){
     super.viewDidLoad()
     self.view.addSubView(textField)
}

Just to test that you can visually see it easily as well, you could add something like this:

textField.backgroundColor = UIColor.blackColor()

UI elements not displaying in view controllers that are apart of custom tab bar controller

1 Answers1