Alex Rivera | Logout

How do I make UILabel display outlined text?

Asked 2009-07-09T10:47:20.287
121

All I want is a one pixel black border around my white UILabel text.

I got as far as subclassing UILabel with the code below, which I clumsily cobbled together from a few tangentially related online examples. And it works but it's very, very slow (except on the simulator) and I couldn't get it to center the text vertically either (so I hard-coded the y value on the last line temporarily). Ahhhh!

void ShowStringCentered(CGContextRef gc, float x, float y, const char *str) {
    CGContextSetTextDrawingMode(gc, kCGTextInvisible);
    CGContextShowTextAtPoint(gc, 0, 0, str, strlen(str));
    CGPoint pt = CGContextGetTextPosition(gc);

    CGContextSetTextDrawingMode(gc, kCGTextFillStroke);

    CGContextShowTextAtPoint(gc, x - pt.x / 2, y, str, strlen(str));
}


- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect{

    CGContextRef theContext = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
    CGRect viewBounds = self.bounds;

    CGContextTranslateCTM(theContext, 0, viewBounds.size.height);
    CGContextScaleCTM(theContext, 1, -1);

    CGContextSelectFont (theContext, "Helvetica", viewBounds.size.height,  kCGEncodingMacRoman);

    CGContextSetRGBFillColor (theContext, 1, 1, 1, 1);
    CGContextSetRGBStrokeColor (theContext, 0, 0, 0, 1);
    CGContextSetLineWidth(theContext, 1.0);

    ShowStringCentered(theContext, rect.size.width / 2.0, 12, [[self text] cStringUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]);
}

I just have a nagging feeling that I'm overlooking a simpler way to do this. Perhaps by overriding "drawTextInRect", but I can't seem to get drawTextInRect to bend to my will at all despite staring at it intently and frowning really really hard.

Edit
Report

1 Answer

4

If you want to animate something complicated, the best way is to programmaticly take a screenshot of it an animate that instead!

To take a screenshot of a view, you'll need code a little like this:

UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(mainContentView.bounds.size);
[mainContentView.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
UIImage *viewImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext(); 

Where mainContentView is the view you want to take a screenshot of. Add viewImage to a UIImageView and animate that.

answered 2009-07-09T10:59:44.490

Your Answer