What is iToast

This page tells you what toast notifications are and why you may need them in your iPhone/iPad application.

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If you develop already for Android, then you know what it is so you can skip to the next section.

For the others of us: a toast is a spécial way to display 'non intrusive' message to the user. Those message are displayed on a configurable place on the screen and they disapear after a configurable time interval. The way they appear is similar to the way the Growl app (on mac do).

Difference between iToast and Toast on Android

• The iToasts disapear when tapped by the user even if the configured time is not elapsed.
• iToasts can have an image-icon attached to them (info, warning, error).
• There is application wide configuration object that you can use so that all your iToast looks the same.
• We are planning to add a plug-in based system so that we can offer many look'n feel for the toasts instead of the default.
• iToast advertise the chaining of call so that you can create any toast with any configuration in on instruction.

Benefits of using Toast

Some benefits are:

• The user is not distracted by such alert and just notice them: he don't need to click "Ok". As a rule of thumb we use iToast now everywhere we would have put a UIAlertView with only a single Button.
• You can add it anywhere on the screen depending of the importance of the iToast. We display them with a gravity of Top when it is of medium importance, Center when it is Very importan an Bottom when it is of low importance.

How to use iToast.

Simple Usage

There is only one way to create an iToast: so you won't need to retain much. In it basic form, you create an iToast this way:

[[iToast makeText:NSLocalizedString(@"The activity has been successfully saved.", @"")] show];

Chaining calls

Like in jQuery, you can chain call and terminate by using the show method, there are many things you can configure. Look bellow.

[[[iToast makeText:NSLocalizedString(@"The activity has been successfully saved.", @"")] 
  			setGravity:iToastGravityBottom] show];

Note : Above the gravity can be any of iToastGravityBottom, iToastGravityTop, iToastGravityCenter.

• You can also provide the a physical position on the screen: see the class interface.
• You can provide two offset value that will be added to the actual position of the iToast: you can use this to either move it a few pixel to the left (negative offsetLeft), right (positive offsetLeft), top or bottom.

Or

[[[[iToast makeText:NSLocalizedString(@"Something to display a very long time", @"")] 
    				setGravity:iToastGravityBottom] setDuration:iToastDurationLong] show];

Note : Above the duration can be any integer (the number of millisecond to display it). There is Three preset you can use for duration:

• iToastDurationLong
• iToastDurationShort
• iToastDurationNormal

The Interface

@interface iToast : NSObject {
    iToastSettings *_settings;
    NSInteger offsetLeft;
    NSInteger offsetTop;

    NSTimer *timer;

    UIView *view;
    NSString *text;
}

- (void) show;

- (iToast *) setDuration:(NSInteger ) duration;
- (iToast *) setGravity:(iToastGravity) gravity 
			 offsetLeft:(NSInteger) left
			 offsetTop:(NSInteger) top;
- (iToast *) setGravity:(iToastGravity) gravity;
- (iToast *) setPostion:(CGPoint) position;

+ (iToast *) makeText:(NSString *) text;

-(iToastSettings *) theSettings;

@end

The Shared Settings

You don't need to set all the settings each time you want to show an iToast. There is a shared settings repo that each iToast copy it setting when first created.

To modify the shared setting, you first obtain the shared settings like:

iToastSettings *theSettings = [iToastSettings getSharedSettings];

Then you change the settings:

theSettings.duration = 4000;

The interface of the SharedSettings

 @interface iToastSettings : NSObject<NSCopying>{
NSInteger duration;
iToastGravity gravity;
CGPoint postition;
iToastType toastType;

NSDictionary *images;

BOOL positionIsSet;
}


@property(assign) NSInteger duration;
@property(assign) iToastGravity gravity;
@property(assign) CGPoint postition;
@property(readonly) NSDictionary *images;


- (void) setImage:(UIImage *)img forType:(iToastType) type;
+ (iToastSettings *) getSharedSettings;
					  
@end

Not yet implemented

You are interested by those features? write the code and share with the community.

• Display of icons based of the type of iToast.
• Plugin based interface to customize the toasts.