How to ignore touch events and pass them to another subview's UIControl objects?

Solution 1:

Probably the best way to do this is to override hitTest:withEvent: in the view that you want to be ignoring touches. Depending on the complexity of your view hierarchy, there are a couple of easy ways to do this.

If you have a reference to the view underneath the view to ignore:

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
    UIView *hitView = [super hitTest:point withEvent:event];

    // If the hitView is THIS view, return the view that you want to receive the touch instead:
    if (hitView == self) {
        return otherView;
    }
    // Else return the hitView (as it could be one of this view's buttons):
    return hitView;
}

If you don't have a reference to the view:

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
    UIView *hitView = [super hitTest:point withEvent:event];

    // If the hitView is THIS view, return nil and allow hitTest:withEvent: to
    // continue traversing the hierarchy to find the underlying view.
    if (hitView == self) {
        return nil;
    }
    // Else return the hitView (as it could be one of this view's buttons):
    return hitView;
}

I would recommend the first approach as being the most robust (if it's possible to obtain a reference to the underlying view).

Solution 2:

Swift answer:

You can create a UIView subclass, IgnoreTouchView. In a storyboard, set it on the VC's view(s) you want to pass through touches:

class IgnoreTouchView : UIView {
    override func hitTest(_ point: CGPoint, with event: UIEvent?) -> UIView? {
        let hitView = super.hitTest(point, with: event)
        if hitView == self {
            return nil
        }
        return hitView
    }
}

Note that you must set UserInteractionEnabled to true, for the UIView in question!

Solution 3:

You could also disable user interaction so that touch events are ignored and are passed to the parent.

In Swift:

yourView.isUserInteractionEnabled = false

Solution 4:

I haven't found a good way to pass UITouch events between objects. What usually works better is to implement hitTest and return nil if the point isn't in the view that you want to handle it:

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event

Solution 5:

This is an old question, and it comes up at the top of searches. So, I thought I'd post another possible solution that might work better for your situation. In my case I wanted to drag a label on top of another label and I wanted to get the label below in the hitTest. The simplest thing to do is to set the userInteractionEnabled to NO or false, then do your hitTest, and then set it back again if you need to move it again. Here's a code sample in Swift:

override func touchesEnded(touches: Set<UITouch>, withEvent event: UIEvent?) {
    let touch = touches.first
    let location = touch?.locationInView(self.view)
    self.label1.userInteractionEnabled = false
    let view = self.view.hitTest(location!, withEvent: nil) as? UILabel
    print(view?.text)
    self.label1.userInteractionEnabled = true
}