Autolayout - How to align with longest item

Question

Suppose I have a view that contains two columns of objects. The first column contains labels, and the second column contains, say, sliders. I want the sliders all to align left with each other. I want the labels all to align left with each other. The trick is, how can I set the spacing between the labels and sliders so that the default spacing is used between the left sliders and the longest label, thus:

label 1            slider 1
label 2            slider 2
longer label 3     slider 3
very long label 4[]slider 4
label 5            slider 5

I've placed square brackets, [], where the default spacing should be. Is it possible to add this sort of constraint in the storyboard (iOS 7)? If so, how? The trick is that I don't know which label is the longest, especially with localization.

Ideally, I could specify a bounding box around the labels and align the sliders with the right side of the bounding box.

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this in IB. All the labels should have their left edges aligned, and one of them should have a fixed space to the left edge of their superview (all the elements should be enclosed in a UIView). Similarly, the sliders would have their right edges aligned and one of them would have a fixed space to the right edge of the box. Give one of the labels a horizontal spacing constraint to a slider -- make that a short one, say ==8 with a priority of 900 (that's the important thing). Now, give all the labels a >= constraint with whatever value you want for the minimum spacing (and leave the priority at 1000).