UIView's -hitTest:withEvent: called three times?

Question

I am trying to intercept any activity (i.e. touches) that happens inside my whole application.

In other words, I am trying to be notified of any touch event that happens within my main UIView, containing the rest of my controls. To do so, I thought the UIView's method -hitTest:withEvent: was a good solution.

However, when I NSLog into this overriden method before calling [super hitTest:... withEvent:...], I see that it is called 3 times for any touch I make, and I cannot see any difference in the event I receive each time it is called.

Here is how is implemented the method in the main view of my application :

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
    NSLog(@"hitTest:withEvent called :");
    NSLog(@"Event: %@", event);
    NSLog(@"Point: %@", NSStringFromCGPoint(point));
    NSLog(@"Event Type: %d", event.type);
    NSLog(@"Event SubType: %d", event.subtype);
    NSLog(@"---");

    return [super hitTest:point withEvent:event];
}

And here is what I NSLog for a single touch in this view :

2010-11-29 14:09:26.892 Application[68818:207] hitTest:withEvent called :
2010-11-29 14:09:26.892 Application[68818:207] Event: <UITouchesEvent: 0x5716d60> timestamp: 37935.2 touches: {(
)}
2010-11-29 14:09:26.892 Application[68818:207] Point: {173, 498}
2010-11-29 14:09:26.892 Application[68818:207] Event Type: 0
2010-11-29 14:09:26.892 Application[68818:207] Event SubType: 0
2010-11-29 14:09:26.893 Application[68818:207] ---
2010-11-29 14:09:26.893 Application[68818:207] hitTest:withEvent called :
2010-11-29 14:09:26.893 Application[68818:207] Event: <UITouchesEvent: 0x5716d60> timestamp: 37935.2 touches: {(
)}
2010-11-29 14:09:26.893 Application[68818:207] Point: {173, 498}
2010-11-29 14:09:26.893 Application[68818:207] Event Type: 0
2010-11-29 14:09:26.893 Application[68818:207] Event SubType: 0
2010-11-29 14:09:26.893 Application[68818:207] ---
2010-11-29 14:09:26.893 Application[68818:207] hitTest:withEvent called :
2010-11-29 14:09:26.894 Application[68818:207] Event: <UITouchesEvent: 0x5716d60> timestamp: 37944.9 touches: {(
)}
2010-11-29 14:09:26.894 Application[68818:207] Point: {173, 498}
2010-11-29 14:09:26.894 Application[68818:207] Event Type: 0
2010-11-29 14:09:26.894 Application[68818:207] Event SubType: 0
2010-11-29 14:09:26.894 Application[68818:207] ---

How could I make any difference between those three notifications in order to trigger the action I want to make only one time for a single touch ?

Thanks in advance !

Answer 1

There are indeed 3 calls to hitTest. It is not clear why, but we can surmise by the timestamps on the event that the first two calls are to do with completing the previous gesture - those timestamps are always very close to whenever the previous touch happened, and will be some distance from the current time.

This is how I determine which hitTest to process:

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
  NSTimeInterval system = [[NSProcessInfo processInfo] systemUptime];

  if (system - event.timestamp > 0.1) {
    // not the event we were interested in
  } else {
    // use this call
  }
}