Adding buttons to toolbar programmatically in swift

Question

I'm having a hard time adding a button to the toolbar in swift, below you can see an image of the toolbar that I'm after, unfortunately even though I have it designed in my Storyboard file, it doesn't show up when setting the toolbar to be visible.

The way that I have designed this is two items, the first being a flexable space element, and the second being an add element. It looks like this:

Here's the code that I've used to attempt to replicate this in code:

self.navigationController?.toolbarHidden = false
self.navigationController?.toolbarItems = [UIBarButtonItem]()
self.navigationController?.toolbarItems?.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .FlexibleSpace, target: self, action: nil)
)
self.navigationController?.toolbarItems?.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .Add, target: self, action: "onClickedToolbeltButton:")
)

As you can see I'm setting the toolbar to be visible, initializing (and clearing) the toolbarItems array of UIBarButtonItem, and then adding two UIBarButtonItem's to the array, in the proper order.

However, the toolbelt remains empty, why is this?

David Seek · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-13 15:51:25Z

46

None of the above worked for me, but:

Swift 3 / Swift 4

self.navigationController?.isToolbarHidden = false

var items = [UIBarButtonItem]()

items.append( UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .flexibleSpace, target: self, action: nil) )
items.append( UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .add, target: self, action: #selector(add)) ) // replace add with your function

self.toolbarItems = items // this made the difference. setting the items to the controller, not the navigationcontroller

edited Dec 13, 2017 at 15:51

answered Sep 21, 2017 at 3:26

David Seek

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3 Comments

Allison Over a year ago

This works, but the real question is what are the rest of them doing?

biomiker Over a year ago

Those who scroll down will be rewarded. Thank you.

Takasur Over a year ago

This should be the accepted answer instead, but yes, what makes it different from the accepted answer?

iwasrobbed · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-26 01:50:41Z

24

The usual way to do that is to create the array of toolbar items and then assign the array to the items property of the toolbar.

self.navigationController?.isToolbarHidden = false
var items = [UIBarButtonItem]()
items.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .flexibleSpace, target: nil, action: nil)
)
items.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .add, target: self, action: #selector(onClickedToolbeltButton(_:)))
)
toolbarItems = items

edited Sep 26, 2019 at 1:50

iwasrobbed

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answered Jan 30, 2016 at 19:30

vadian

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3 Comments

BangOperator Over a year ago

If action is nil, why do you need to set target as self?

Yassine ElBadaoui Over a year ago

as @DavidSeek mentioned, self.toolbarItems on UIViewController is the right way to set toolbar buttons.

Zhou Haibo Over a year ago

Oh, just know navigationController has a build-in toolbar, I created my own toolbar and set its constraints programmatically before, what a miss:)

Ulysses · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-31 00:06:02Z

7

self.navigationController?.toolbarItems = items

self.navigationController?.setToolbarItems(items, animated: false)

self.navigationController?.toolbar.setItems(items, animated: false)

Try it.

        self.navigationController?.toolbarHidden = false
        var items = [UIBarButtonItem]()
        items.append(
            UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .FlexibleSpace, target: self, action: nil)
        )
        items.append(
            UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .Add, target: self, action: "onClickedToolbeltButton:")
        )

        self.navigationController?.toolbar.setItems(items, animated: false)

edited Jan 31, 2016 at 0:06

answered Jan 30, 2016 at 19:51

Ulysses

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Comments

damianesteban · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-29 20:00:41Z

1

Here is an example with MKUserTrackingBarButtonItem:

navigationController?.toolbarHidden = false
let barButtonItem = MKUserTrackingBarButtonItem(mapView: self.mapView)
self.toolbarItems = [barButtonItem]

answered Jul 29, 2016 at 20:00

damianesteban

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Comments

Victor Carreño · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-31 21:07:51Z

-2

let addButton = UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: UIBarButtonSystemItem.Add, target: self, action: "addSomething:")
toolbarItems = [UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .FlexibleSpace, target: self, action: nil),addButton]
self.navigationController!.setToolbarHidden(false, animated: false)

answered Jan 31, 2016 at 21:07

Victor Carreño

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Comments

Jorge Ramírez · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-10 14:45:56Z

-2

Updated answer using the current selector syntax for

Swift 3

var barButtons = [UIBarButtonItem]()
barButtons.append(
    UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .done, target: self, action: #selector(ThisViewController.onDoneBarButtonClick))
)
self.navigationItem.setRightBarButtonItems(barButtons, animated: false)

You can place this code in any loading event. It works seamless for me in viewDidLoad().

Replace "ThisViewController.onDoneBarButtonClick" with your view controller class name and any method you want to write to manage the toolbar button click.

answered Aug 10, 2017 at 14:45

Jorge Ramírez

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