Pull to Refresh UIViewController in iOS

Posted on Edited on Disqus: Word count in article: 945 Reading time ≈ 1 mins.

If you try to add a UIRefreshControl to a UIViewController, you’ll get an error.

UIRefreshControl can only be managed by a UITableViewController.

So, here’s a trick.

Code

  1. Set up a table view in your UIViewController.
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let refreshControl = UIRefreshControl()
var tableView = UITableView()
  1. Add refreshControl to tableView, not view.
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tableView.frame = view.frame

refreshControl.addTarget(self, action: Selector("refreshView:"), forControlEvents: .ValueChanged)
tableView.addSubview(refreshControl)  // here it is

self.view.addSubview(tableView)
  1. refreshView function.
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func refreshView(refreshControl: UIRefreshControl) {
    refreshControl.attributedTitle = NSAttributedString(string: "Refresh")
    refreshControl.attributedTitle = NSAttributedString(string: "Last updated on " + NSDate().description)

    refreshControl.endRefreshing()
}

If you, like me, prefer to use Storyboard

  1. Storyboard -> UITableViewController -> enable Refreshing.

  2. Then you can Ctrl + drag just like UIButton.

Translated by gpt-3.5-turbo