I'm trying to make a facebook style input bar for when a user wants to make a comment. To do that I created a custom UIView in an .xib which holds my buttons and input UITextView (generally I much prefer using storyboard to programatically creating constraints). I linked the bottom constraint of that UITextVuew to the bottom of my view with a constant that represents the height of the keyboard so it will appear right above the keyboard. So far so good.
I want the UITextView to be loaded but to remain hidden and unactionable until the user hits the comment button. I then have the main view controller attempt to make the UITextView a first responder which should trigger the WillShowKeyboard function in which I reset the constraint on my text view as well as make my custom view visible and actionable.
The issue is, the textview cannot become the first responder for some reason. I think its because its "outside the view hierarchy" or maybe because user interaction is disabled at the moment of the call. I also tried calling the first responder inside my custom view which didn't do anything either.
I want this input text bar to be a custom view/cell so i can reuse it through the project, I'd prefer not to build it programatically in each place where I want to use it. Is there a way to force include my custom view into the view hierarchy (does that even make sense?). Also is there a way to force the keyboard to show without any text view actually becoming the first responder because that would be an adequate solution as well.
First time asking a question on stack overflow so sorry if anything is unclear! Thanks
