Custom UINavigationBar Back Button

via: http://www.applausible.com/blog/?p=401

A common thing in client apps i write is custom back images, mostly because the apps have a custom UINavigationBar image, so its good to have them themed together. You can see what this looks like for this tutorial:

Ok so in your View Controller, thats shown after something in your navigation view is shown, add this code in the viewDidLoad method:

01	- (void)viewDidLoad {

02	[super viewDidLoad];

03

04	// Set the custom back button

05	UIImage *buttonImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"back_button.png"];

06

07	//create the button and assign the image

08	UIButton *button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];

09	[button setImage:buttonImage forState:UIControlStateNormal];

10

11	//set the frame of the button to the size of the image (see note below)

12	button.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, buttonImage.size.width, buttonImage.size.height);

13

14	[button addTarget:self action:@selector(back) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

15

16	//create a UIBarButtonItem with the button as a custom view

17	UIBarButtonItem *customBarItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:button];

18	self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = customBarItem;

19

20	// Cleanup

21	[customBarItem release];

22

}

Here we load the image we want for the back button in the navigation bar, create a custom UIButton and set the image to the button and then specify that the button is the left button item. I also add a selector to catch clicks, so we know when the user presses back. It calls the back method which quite simply:

1	-(void)back {

2	// Tell the controller to go back

3	[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES];

4

}

And thats it! You can get the project source here – CustomBackButton