iOS frame change one property (eg width)

To answer your original question: yes, it's possible to change just one member of a CGRect structure. This code throws no errors:

myRect.size.width = 50;

What is not possible, however, is to change a single member of a CGRect that is itself a property of another object. In that very common case, you would have to use a temporary local variable:

CGRect frameRect = self.frame;
frameRect.size.width = 50;
self.frame = frameRect;

The reason for this is that using the property accessor self.frame = ... is equivalent to [self setFrame:...] and this accessor always expects an entire CGRect. Mixing C-style struct access with Objective-C property dot notation does not work well in this case.

I liked Ahmed Khalaf's answer, but it occurred to me that you may as well just write out a few C functions... the key advantage being that it'll be easier to track down errors in the event that you're using the wrong type.

Having said that, I wrote a .h file with these function declarations:

CGRect CGRectSetWidth(CGRect rect, CGFloat width);
CGRect CGRectSetHeight(CGRect rect, CGFloat height);
CGRect CGRectSetSize(CGRect rect, CGSize size);
CGRect CGRectSetX(CGRect rect, CGFloat x);
CGRect CGRectSetY(CGRect rect, CGFloat y);
CGRect CGRectSetOrigin(CGRect rect, CGPoint origin);

And a corresponding .m file with these function implementations:

CGRect CGRectSetWidth(CGRect rect, CGFloat width) {
    return CGRectMake(rect.origin.x, rect.origin.y, width, rect.size.height);
}

CGRect CGRectSetHeight(CGRect rect, CGFloat height) {
    return CGRectMake(rect.origin.x, rect.origin.y, rect.size.width, height);
}

CGRect CGRectSetSize(CGRect rect, CGSize size) {
    return CGRectMake(rect.origin.x, rect.origin.y, size.width, size.height);
}

CGRect CGRectSetX(CGRect rect, CGFloat x) {
    return CGRectMake(x, rect.origin.y, rect.size.width, rect.size.height);
}

CGRect CGRectSetY(CGRect rect, CGFloat y) {
    return CGRectMake(rect.origin.x, y, rect.size.width, rect.size.height);
}

CGRect CGRectSetOrigin(CGRect rect, CGPoint origin) {
    return CGRectMake(origin.x, origin.y, rect.size.width, rect.size.height);
}

So, now, to do what you want, you can just do:

self.frame = CGRectSetWidth(self.frame, 50);

Get even Fancier (update I made a year later)

This has a redundant self.frame in it, though. To fix that, you could add a category on UIView with methods that look like this:

- (void) setFrameWidth:(CGFloat)width {
    self.frame = CGRectSetWidth(self.frame, width); // You could also use a full CGRectMake() function here, if you'd rather.
}

And now you can just type in:

[self setFrameWidth:50];

Or, even better:

self.frameWidth = 50;

And just so you can do something like this:

self.frameWidth = otherView.frameWidth; // as opposed to self.frameWidth = otherView.frame.size.width;

You'll need to also have this in your category:

- (CGFloat) frameWidth {
    return self.frame.size.width;
}

Enjoy.

Based on ArtOfWarfare's solution (which is really awesome) I've build the UIView category without C-functions.

Usage examples:

[self setFrameWidth:50];
self.frameWidth = 50;
self.frameWidth += 50;
self.frameWidth = otherView.frameWidth; // as opposed to self.frameWidth = otherView.frame.size.width;

Header file UIView+easy_frame.h:

@interface UIView (easy_frame)

- (void) setFrameWidth:(CGFloat)width;
- (void) setFrameHeight:(CGFloat)height;
- (void) setFrameX:(CGFloat)x;
- (void) setFrameY:(CGFloat)y;

- (CGFloat) frameWidth;
- (CGFloat) frameHeight;
- (CGFloat) frameX;
- (CGFloat) frameY;

Implementation file UIView+easy_frame.m:

#import "UIView+easy_frame.h"
@implementation UIView (easy_frame)

# pragma mark - Setters

- (void) setFrameWidth:(CGFloat)width
{
  self.frame = CGRectMake(self.frame.origin.x,
                          self.frame.origin.y,
                          width,
                          self.frame.size.height);
}

- (void) setFrameHeight:(CGFloat)height
{
  self.frame = CGRectMake(self.frame.origin.x,
                          self.frame.origin.y,
                          self.frame.size.width,
                          height);
}

- (void) setFrameX:(CGFloat)x
{
  self.frame = CGRectMake(x,
                          self.frame.origin.y,
                          self.frame.size.width,
                          self.frame.size.height);
}

- (void) setFrameY:(CGFloat)y
{
  self.frame = CGRectMake(self.frame.origin.x,
                          y,
                          self.frame.size.width,
                          self.frame.size.height);
}

# pragma mark - Getters

- (CGFloat) frameWidth
{
  return self.frame.size.width;
}

- (CGFloat) frameHeight
{
  return self.frame.size.height;
}

- (CGFloat) frameX
{
  return self.frame.origin.x;
}

- (CGFloat) frameY
{
  return self.frame.origin.y;
}

If you find yourself needing to do this sort of individual component modification, it may be worthwhile having macros like these somewhere accessible by all of your code:

#define CGRectSetWidth(rect, w)    CGRectMake(rect.origin.x, rect.origin.y, w, rect.size.height)
#define ViewSetWidth(view, w)   view.frame = CGRectSetWidth(view.frame, w)

This way, whenever you need to change the width alone - you would simply write

ViewSetWidth(self, 50);

instead of

self.frame = CGRectMake(self.frame.origin.x, self.frame.origin.y, self.frame.size.width, 50);