Creating a Custom UIView in MonoTouch and using it in the XCode XIB editor

This was my answer in response to:

  I cannot figure out how to add a custom control to the XIB.

in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14738964/how-do-you-add-a-custom-uiviewcontroller-to-existing-xib/

----


For a normal UIView, the basic steps you need to go through are:

1. Create your custom view in C# as a class
   
   

   public class MyView
   {
   }
   
   

2. Add the UIView base class to it, add a Register attribute and add two constructors:
   
   

   [Register("MyView")]
   public class MyView : UIView
   {
       public MyView() {}
       public MyView(IntPtr handle) : base(handle) {}
   }
   
   

3. To make it do something useful, then add a Draw implementation:
   
   

   public override Draw(RectangleF rect)
   {
       var context = UIGraphics.CurrentGraphics();
       UIColor.Red.SetFill();
       context.FillEclipseInRect(rect);
   }
   
   

4. Save and Build your project
   
5. Now double click on the XIB for the UIViewController in which you want to use your custom view.
   
6. This will open up the XIB editor in xCode
    
7. In the editor, add a UIView to the design surface
   
8. Select that UIView and in the Identity Inspector, set the UIView's "Custom Class" to "MyView"
   
9. Save everything in XCode
   
10. Return to MonoDevelop, build and run

There's a video of this flow available at: - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggwO46dd-50&feature=youtube_gdata




For a custom UICollectionView, UILabel, UITableViewCell, or any other UIView base class, then you follow similar steps, just with a different base class and with different constructors too in order to support the specific View.

For a video about custom Table cells, see: http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/uitableviewcell-using-xib-editor.html