Swift, an innovative, modern yet simple, fast and powerful language developed by Apple Inc. for iOS and OS X app development. It has incredibly straightforward and easy syntax, and it has significantly empowered developers to write flexible, secure, and efficient code more than ever. One of the many features that Swift offers is the ability to manipulate the aesthetics of the app, such as changing the font of buttons programmatically.
Understanding Swift UI Controls
The process of customizing a button does not have to be complicated. In Swift, buttons are created as instances of UIButton class. This class comes with properties and methods that allow us to customize our buttons including changing the text, text color, background color, and font.
How to Change Button Font in Swift Programmatically
Changing the font of a button in Swift programmatically is relatively simple and straightforward. To do this, you will need to use the UIFont class, which allows you to pick out the font style you want to use.
let button = UIButton() button.titleLabel?.font = UIFont(name:"YOUR FONT NAME", size: 22)
In the above code, “YOUR FONT NAME” is the name of the font you want to switch to. The size is also defined in the code, being captured under the ‘size’ argument.
Step-by-Step Code Explanation
Let’s dissect the above code.
1.
- We first create a button object using the UIButton class.
- We then access the button’s titleLabel property. This property is an optional, hence the introduction of the question mark. Essentially, it refers to a UILabel that holds the button’s title.
- Finally, we change the titleLabel’s font using UIFont’s initializer, specifying both the font name and size. The initializer `UIFont(name:size:)` returns an optional, so if the system cannot find the font or it doesn’t support the size you inputted, it will return nil and the font won’t change.
Remember to add the button to the view hierarchy after customization.
self.view.addSubview(button)
Further Customization of Buttons in Swift
There are many other ways you can customize buttons in Swift programmatically. For example: changing the button’s color, adding a background, adding borders, and changing the text, among other things. All these changes make for a more engaging user interface.
Swift is truly a powerful language for iOS development. It offers incredible flexibility when it comes to customizability, which includes changing button fonts programmatically as we’ve just seen. By understanding and using Swift’s UI control classes, such as UIButton and UIFont, you can create a more appealing and customized user interface for your applications. Lastly, remember to always check and ensure that the font name you provide in your code is available, as typo errors can prevent your font from changing.
