Programmatically create a UIView with color gradient

I'm trying to generate a view with a gradient color background (A solid color to transparent) at runtime. Is there a way of doing that?

Solution 1:

Objective-C:

UIView *view = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 320, 50)];
CAGradientLayer *gradient = [CAGradientLayer layer];

gradient.frame = view.bounds;
gradient.colors = @[(id)[UIColor whiteColor].CGColor, (id)[UIColor blackColor].CGColor];

[view.layer insertSublayer:gradient atIndex:0];

Swift:

let view = UIView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 320, height: 50))
let gradient = CAGradientLayer()

gradient.frame = view.bounds
gradient.colors = [UIColor.white.cgColor, UIColor.black.cgColor]

view.layer.insertSublayer(gradient, at: 0)

Info: use startPoint and endPoint to change direction of gradient.

If there are any other views added onto this UIView (such as a UILabel), you may want to consider setting the background color of those UIView’s to [UIColor clearColor] so the gradient view is presented instead of the background color for sub views. Using clearColor has a slight performance hit.

Solution 2:

You can create a custom class GradientView:

Swift 5

class GradientView: UIView {
    override open class var layerClass: AnyClass {
       return CAGradientLayer.classForCoder()
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        let gradientLayer = layer as! CAGradientLayer
        gradientLayer.colors = [UIColor.white.cgColor, UIColor.black.cgColor]
    }
}

In the storyboard, set the class type to any view that you want to have gradient background:

This is better in the following ways:

• No need to set frame of CLayer
• Use NSConstraint as usual on the UIView
• Don't need to create sublayers (less memory use)