Adding UIBarButton item in swift

Question

I'm trying to add a UIBarButton item to my nav bar.

Here is my Navigation Bar class declaration:

import UIKit

class NavigationBarController: UINavigationController {

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        configureToolbar()        
    }

    override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
        super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
        // Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
    }

    // #pragma mark - Navigation bar data source

    func configureToolbar() {
        let toolbarButtonItems = [
            searchBarButtonItem
        ]
        toolbar.setItems(toolbarButtonItems, animated: true)
    }

    var searchBarButtonItem: UIBarButtonItem {
        return UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .Search, target: self, action: "barButtonItemClicked:")
    }
}

No error in compiler, but all I get is a plain navigation bar.

How do I get the UIBarButtonItem to show up?

Answer 1

To add items to the NavigationBar of a NavigationController, or a NavigationBar added to a ViewController, you will need to first go through NavigationItem. Try this:

self.navigationItem.setRightBarButtonItems(navigationBarButtonItemsArray, animated: true)

// Or if you just want to insert one item.

self.navigationItem.setRightBarButtonItem(UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .Search, target: self, action: "barButtonItemClicked:"), animated: true)

To switch the button to the left side, just replace setRightBarButtonItem to setLeftBarButtonItem or setLeftBarButtonItems.