How to add a UITextField to a UIAlertController

Swift version: 5.1

Paul Hudson @twostraws May 28th 2019

The UIAlertController class from iOS 8.0 lets you add as many text fields as you need, and you can read the value of those text fields when the user taps a button.

The example below creates an alert controller with one button and a text field. When the button is tapped, the text of the text field is pulled out, at which point it's down to you to do something interesting with it:

func promptForAnswer() {
    let ac = UIAlertController(title: "Enter answer", message: nil, preferredStyle: .alert)
    ac.addTextField()

    let submitAction = UIAlertAction(title: "Submit", style: .default) { [unowned ac] _ in
        let answer = ac.textFields![0]
        // do something interesting with "answer" here
    }

    ac.addAction(submitAction)

    present(ac, animated: true)
}

Available from iOS 8.0 – see Hacking with Swift tutorial 5