Gradients on UIView and UILabels On iPhone

iphone ios cocoa-touch gradient
TonyNeallon picture TonyNeallon · Jan 7, 2009 · Viewed 175.3k times · Source

Possible Duplicate:
Manually drawing a gradient in iPhone apps?

My application needs to display text in either a UIView or UILabel but the back ground must be a gradient as opposed to a true UIColor. Using a graphics program to create desired look is no good as the text may vary depending on data returned from a server.

Does anyone know the quickest way to tackle this? Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Answer

Mirko Froehlich picture Mirko Froehlich · Dec 19, 2009

I realize this is an older thread, but for future reference:

As of iPhone SDK 3.0, custom gradients can be implemented very easily, without subclassing or images, by using the new CAGradientLayer:

 UIView *view = [[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 320, 100)] autorelease];
 CAGradientLayer *gradient = [CAGradientLayer layer];
 gradient.frame = view.bounds;
 gradient.colors = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:(id)[[UIColor blackColor] CGColor], (id)[[UIColor whiteColor] CGColor], nil];
 [view.layer insertSublayer:gradient atIndex:0];

Take a look at the CAGradientLayer docs. You can optionally specify start and end points (in case you don't want a linear gradient that goes straight from the top to the bottom), or even specific locations that map to each of the colors.

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