The UIView class uses an on-demand drawing model for presenting content. When a view first appears on the screen, the system asks it to draw its content. The system captures a snapshot of this content and uses that snapshot as the view’s visual representation. If you never change the view’s content, the view’s drawing code may never be called again. The snapshot image is reused for most operations involving the view. If you do change the content, you notify the system that the view has changed. The view then repeats the process of drawing the view and capturing a snapshot of the new results.
When the contents of your view change, you do not redraw those changes directly. Instead, you invalidate the view using either the setNeedsDisplay or setNeedsDisplayInRect: method. These methods tell the system that the contents of the view changed and need to be redrawn at the next opportunity. The system waits until the end of the current run loop before initiating any drawing operations. This delay gives you a chance to invalidate multiple views, add or remove views from your hierarchy, hide views, resize views, and reposition views all at once. All of the changes you make are then reflected at the same time.
Note: Changing a view’s geometry does not automatically cause the system to redraw the view’s content. The view’s contentMode property determines how changes to the view’s geometry are interpreted. Most content modes stretch or reposition the existing snapshot within the view’s boundaries and do not create a new one. For more information about how content modes affect the drawing cycle of your view, see Content Modes.
When the time comes to render your view’s content, the actual drawing process varies depending on the view and its configuration. System views typically implement private drawing methods to render their content. Those same system views often expose interfaces that you can use to configure the view’s actual appearance. For custom UIView subclasses, you typically override the drawRect: method of your view and use that method to draw your view’s content. There are also other ways to provide a view’s content, such as setting the contents of the underlying layer directly, but overriding the drawRect: method is the most common technique.
For more information about how to draw content for custom views, see Implementing Your Drawing Code.
Content Modes
Each view has a content mode that controls how the view recycles its content in response to changes in the view’s geometry and whether it recycles its content at all. When a view is first displayed, it renders its content as usual and the results are captured in an underlying bitmap. After that, changes to the view’s geometry do not always cause the bitmap to be recreated. Instead, the value in the contentMode property determines whether the bitmap should be scaled to fit the new bounds or simply pinned to one corner or edge of the view.
The content mode of a view is applied whenever you do the following:
- Change the width or height of the view’s frame or bounds rectangles.
- Assign a transform that includes a scaling factor to the view’s transform property.
By default, the contentMode property for most views is set to UIViewContentModeScaleToFill, which causes the view’s contents to be scaled to fit the new frame size
Content modes are good for recycling the contents of your view, but you can also set the content mode to the UIViewContentModeRedraw value when you specifically want your custom views to redraw themselves during scaling and resizing operations. Setting your view’s content mode to this value forces the system to call your view’s drawRect: method in response to geometry changes. In general, you should avoid using this value whenever possible, and you should certainly not use it with the standard system views.
For more information about the available content modes, see UIView Class Reference.
Every time you draw into a view or change its geometry, you do so relative to some coordinate system. In the case of drawing, you specify coordinates relative to the view’s own coordinate system. In the case of geometry changes, you specify coordinates relative to the superview’s coordinate system. The UIWindow and UIView classes both include methods to help you convert from one coordinate system to another.