how to change the nav bar back button title?

[mellomike]

I'm having a problem setting the text that's shown on the back button of a navigation bar.

I know by default the but displays the title property of the previous view controller, but how do I set the text myself?

[iPhoneGuy]

In your main view init:

UIBarButtonItem *backButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Back" style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:nil action:nil];
self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = backButton;
[backButton release];

[mellomike]

hi I just put that code into my view controller's initWithNibName and it's still showing the title property of the last view controller.

[mellomike]

anyone have a solution for this?

[mellomike]

Originally Posted by iPhoneGuy

In your main view init:

UIBarButtonItem *backButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Back" style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:nil action:nil];
self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = backButton;
[backButton release];

hey that did work!!! I was adding that code to the wrong view controller. It's supposed to go inside the calling controller, not the one currently on screen.

Thanks for your help

[Kyle]

Originally Posted by iPhoneGuy

In your main view init:

UIBarButtonItem *backButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Back" style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:nil action:nil];
self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = backButton;
[backButton release];

Unless I´m misunderstanding something you can just use

self.navigationItem.title =@"Your Title";

[peejavery]

I know this is a little late, but...

Originally Posted by mellomike

It's supposed to go inside the calling controller, not the one currently on screen.

Is there a way to change it from the controller currently being viewed?

I tried the following, but it doesn't work.

self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem.title = @"Test";

[StatCoder]

I think the principle is that since you might call your current view from a variety of other views, the back button title needs to be determined by the previous view. Someone did mention that they created another toolbar button in the current view that laid on top of the back button and then named it and it seemed to work.

[rames44]

Well, if worst comes to worst, from your top view you could grab the array of view controllers from the navigation controller, go to the one that's "one down" on the stack and fiddle with it.

Alternately, if view controller A pushes view controller B on top of itself, it could, at that point, make the change before doing the push based on which view controller was being pushed.

[PhoneyDeveloper]

Any view controller that's been pushed onto a navbar has a parentViewController. So probably a view controller could manipulate the back button title using that property.

[peejavery]

I solved my problem with the same solution from another thread.

Call function from other view (stupid question)

[krye]

Sweet. That worked for me too, the usual

 
UIBarButtonItem *temporaryBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] init];
	temporaryBarButtonItem.title = @"Back";
	self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = temporaryBarButtonItem;
	[temporaryBarButtonItem release];

and

self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem.title = @"Back";

didn't work