UIButton Title Text Does Not Display

Posted by Warlock on May 14, 2009 Leave a comment (11) Go to comments

Ran into a minor problem today when I was attempting to manually create a UIButton in my iPhone app. I attempted to create/configure the button through code similar to the following:

CGRect frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 200, 52); UIButton b = [[UIButton alloc] initWithFrame:frame]; b.titleLabel.text = @"My Button"; b.titleLabel.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor]; b.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];

The key mistake is highlighted in red. I attempted to manually set the text an color of the UIButton‘s label, when in fact the UIButton would automatically reconfigure the label (including it’s text) in response to state changes.

The correct approach is to use send the setXXX:forState: messages to the UIButton object itself. For example, the following code sets the text/color for the UIControlStateNormal state.

[b setTitle:@"Test" forState:UIControlStateNormal]; [b setTitleColor:[UIColor whiteColor] forState:UIControlStateNormal];

CocoaUIButton

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11 Comments.

Ardee Aram May 21, 2009 at 7:59 am

Hello Ryan,

Thanks for this tip, great help
Mike July 8, 2009 at 6:25 pm

Thanks, saved me some time!
Casey July 19, 2009 at 11:27 pm

Awesome, saved me a headache!
Senthil October 13, 2009 at 8:55 am

Thanks.Saved my precious time.
Thanks November 2, 2009 at 7:32 am

for your help. Spared me some digging.
beuj March 10, 2010 at 10:06 am

Thanks dude
James July 20, 2010 at 10:59 pm

I tried doing this, but the button text doesn’t update still

I want to try to change the text value from “start” to “stop” toggle when someone presses it like the stop watch application that came w/ the iphone.

Any hint on why that is the case?
Warlock July 21, 2010 at 1:05 am

The possible control states are:

UIControlStateNormal
UIControlStateHighlighted
UIControlStateDisabled
UIControlStateSelected
UIControlStateApplication
UIControlStateReserved

These are the possible values that you could have a different appearance for. For what you’re talking about, you would need to track the state yourself (running versus stopped) and change the characteristics of the UIControlStateNormal.
Paul January 6, 2011 at 7:07 pm

Nicely done. Thank you!
rick February 9, 2011 at 2:45 am

thanks a lot dear .
Berns Meyer November 17, 2011 at 2:15 pm

There is a great Tutorial about this for the german dev community…
https://bedifferently.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/uibutton-bearbeite-den-titel-teil-2/

hope it helps…