How to Remove All Subviews

How to remove all subviews?

Edit: With thanks to cocoafan: This situation is muddled up by the fact that NSView and UIView handle things differently. For NSView (desktop Mac development only), you can simply use the following:

[someNSView setSubviews:[NSArray array]];

For UIView (iOS development only), you can safely use makeObjectsPerformSelector: because the subviews property will return a copy of the array of subviews:

[[someUIView subviews]
 makeObjectsPerformSelector:@selector(removeFromSuperview)];

Thank you to Tommy for pointing out that makeObjectsPerformSelector: appears to modify the subviews array while it is being enumerated (which it does for NSView, but not for UIView).

Please see this SO question for more details.

Note: Using either of these two methods will remove every view that your main view contains and release them, if they are not retained elsewhere. From Apple's documentation on removeFromSuperview:

If the receiver’s superview is not nil, this method releases the receiver. If you plan to reuse the view, be sure to retain it before calling this method and be sure to release it as appropriate when you are done with it or after adding it to another view hierarchy.

How to remove all subviews of a certain type

Iterate over your maps subviews and remove all UIImageViews:

func removeDots() {
    for case let dot as UIImageView in yourPainMapView.subViews {
        dot.removeFromSuperView()
    }
}

In case you are using other UIImageView subViews you do not want to remove, subclass UIImageView (class MyDot:UIImage {...}):

for case let dot as MyDot in yourPainMapView.subViews

How to remove all subviews of a view in Swift?

EDIT: (thanks Jeremiah / Rollo)

By far the best way to do this in Swift for iOS is:

view.subviews.forEach({ $0.removeFromSuperview() }) // this gets things done
view.subviews.map({ $0.removeFromSuperview() }) // this returns modified array

^^ These features are fun!

let funTimes = ["Awesome","Crazy","WTF"]
extension String { 
    func readIt() {
        print(self)
    }
}

funTimes.forEach({ $0.readIt() })

//// END EDIT

Just do this:

for view in self.view.subviews {
    view.removeFromSuperview()
}

Or if you are looking for a specific class

for view:CustomViewClass! in self.view.subviews {
        if view.isKindOfClass(CustomViewClass) {
            view.doClassThing()
        }
    }

What is the best way to remove all subviews from you self.view?

[self.view.subviews makeObjectsPerformSelector: @selector(removeFromSuperview)];

It's identical to your variant, but slightly shorter.

Swift: Remove All from the Subview

wand1 = UIImageView(... is rewriting your reference over and over, so you will never be able to remove anything but the last item created from the superview. You are either going to have to use an array or dictionary:

class Class
{
    var array = [UIImageView]();
    ...
    func something()
    {
    ...
    for(var i = 0; i < 6; i++){
    let wand1 = UIImageView();
    wand1.image = wand
    array.append(UIImageView(frame: CGRectMake(wandX, wandY, feldBreite, feldBreite)))
    self.add.Subview(wand1)//Dunno how this works but it is your code
    wandXarray.insert(wandX, atIndex: i)
    wandYarray.insert(wandY, atIndex: i)
    wandX = wandX + feldBreite
   }
   ...
   func removeThisImage(index : Int)
   {
       array[index].removeFromSuperView();
   }

Or you can create object references for every image you create, each with a unique name

//NO LONGER ALLOWED
If you just want to remove all subviews from a view and not concerned about removing specifics, just call self.subviews.removeAll() where self is the view that contains your subviews.
//

Looks like you will have to write your own extension method to handle this:

extension UIView
{
    func clearSubviews()
    {
        for subview in self.subviews as! [UIView] {
            subview.removeFromSuperview();
        }
    }
}

Then to use it, it is just self.view.clearSubviews();

Remove all subviews except named

I wouldn't quite do it the way Sony suggested for a couple reasons.

By doing it that way, you'll be removing subviews while using that same subview array for enumeration.
You may also be removing the layout-related subviews, i.e. UILayoutGuide, that you didn't explicitly add to your view.

Instead, I recommend iterating over a separate array containing a copy of your original self.view.subviews array and excluding any subviews of type UILayoutSupport:

var subviews = self.view.subviews
for subview in subviews as [UIView] {
    if subview != toolBarOne && subview != toolBarTwo && !(subview is UILayoutSupport) {
        subview.removeFromSuperview()
    }
}

How to remove a subview (or all subviews of a view)

Since your UIView is autoreleased, you just need to remove it from the superview. For which there is the removeFromSuperview method.

So, you'd just want to call [self.tabsView removeFromSuperview]. As long as your property declaration is set to retain that's all you'll need.

Swift remove subviews from superview

By removing all subviews, you can also be removing subviews other than the ones you explicitly added, like the refresh view and layout constraints.

(And to answer your question from the comments, layout constraints can in fact be subviews. I explain how to remove all subviews except layout constraints here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/27281242/2274694.)

In general, I recommend changing your code to be more specific such that only the views you've added are removed. For example, you could add a tag to the subviews you add in your addPosts method:

post.tag = 1000

then remove only the subviews with that tag in refresh::

let subViews = self.scrollView.subviews
for subview in subViews{
    if subview.tag == 1000 {
        subview.removeFromSuperview()
    }
}

to ensure that you don't remove any subviews you haven't explicitly added yourself.

Edit: It turns out the OP's added subviews are all of custom type PostLineItem so the tags are unnecessary since we can just remove all the PostLineItems instead:

for subview in self.view.subviews {
    if subview is PostLineItem {
        subview.removeFromSuperview()
     }
}