BadgeLabel – Simple UILabel-based Badge

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I know, I know – not another badge class! But the thing is, the other badges laying around the net all seem overly complicated and too inflexible. So yes, I wrote another badge class. Luckily, it was really easy because I used the built-in capabilities of iOS, and it turned out very flexible and powerful, because, well, I used the built-in capabilities of iOS. No manual CoreGraphics drawing code, just automatic CALayer-s magic.

The basic badge is a UILabel whose underlying CALayer has a backgroundColor and cornerRadius:

#import  // don't forget!
// ...
UILabel *badge = [[UILabel alloc] init];
badge.layer.backgroundColor = [UIColor blueColor].CGColor;
badge.layer.cornerRadius = badge.bounds.size.height / 2;

Basically, that’s it. There are some adjustments needed to make sure the label leaves enough space around the text for the rounded corners, but that’s easily done with short overrides of textRectForBounds and drawTextInRect.

The nice thing is how easy it is to make app-icon style badges, with border, shadow and gloss:

  • For border simply set the layer’s borderColor and borderWidth.
  • For shadow set the layer’s shadowOpacity, shadowColor and shadowOffset.
  • For gloss add a CAGradientLayer sublayer.

It’s that simple. And even better: animatable!

You can get the code, along with a Mail.app style BadgeTableViewCell and a demo app, at GitHub: http://github.com/yonat/BadgeLabel

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