Can you give UIStackView borders?

swift uistackview
pmoney13 picture pmoney13 · Dec 10, 2015 · Viewed 26.8k times · Source

I'm trying to give 5 separate UIStackViews in my ViewController borders. I gave each of them an IBOutlet and then called them in viewDidLoad to use the layer property but to no avail. Is it not possible to give stack views borders, programatically?

Code:

@IBOutlet weak var stackView1: UIStackView!
@IBOutlet weak var stackView2: UIStackView!
@IBOutlet weak var stackView3: UIStackView!
@IBOutlet weak var stackView4: UIStackView!
@IBOutlet weak var stackView5: UIStackView!

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    stackView1.layer.borderWidth = 5
    stackView2.layer.borderWidth = 5
    stackView3.layer.borderWidth = 5
    stackView4.layer.borderWidth = 5
    stackView5.layer.borderWidth = 5   
}

Answer

Clafou picture Clafou · Dec 10, 2015

Unfortunately this can't be done. UIStackView is unusual in that it is a "non-rendering" view which performs layout (using Auto Layout constraints) but does not display itself. It has a layer like all UIViews, but it's ignored.

See the Apple doc under "Managing the Stack View's Appearance":

The UIStackView is a nonrendering subclass of UIView. It does not provide any user interface of its own. Instead, it just manages the position and size of its arranged views. As a result, some properties (like backgroundColor) have no affect on the stack view. Similarly, you cannot override layerClass, drawRect:, or drawLayer:inContext:

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