Custom keyboard?

[mriphoneman]

Hey guys,

Is there a way of creating a custom "plug-in" keyboard for the iPhone? I want to do something like the emoji apps do. They all just enable Apple's emoji keyboard, but is there a way that I can create my own custom keyboard and load it onto the iPhone OS through an app?

Where are Apple's keyboards stored on the iPhone? Perhaps I could reverse-engineer something.

Thanks!

[Chilibird]

I don't know much about the Apple keybards, but if you want to create your own keyboard, you'll have to write your own class and implement it. I did a similar thing in an app I've been working on. I subclassed UIView and implemented my own display and destroy methods.

Something to keep in mind that I learned from experience... try to keep all retain/releases within the keyboard class. This means that you will need a reference to the keyboard's parent view. This does give you the advantage of adding in some other fun things... for example I can call my keyboard such that only the keyboard is touchable.

Remember when you're designing the class that you never have to manage the default keyboard in code when you want to display it, so you shouldn't have to here either.