What is the proper way to add a view to a view controller and make it cover it completely through rotations using Auto Layout?

Question

Say I have a UIViewController and I want to add a red UIView atop it that covers its view completely using Auto Layout.

My first instinct was to pin it to every edge of the view controller's view, but due to the iOS 7 nature of view controller views extending underneath the nav bars, pinning it with a constant of 0 doesn't put it under the nav bars. And if I put -64 to cover it in portrait, that's not the correct constant for landscape as the nav bar is shorter.

How should I be implementing this?

Answer 1

Make sure your view is pinned to the top of the super view, not the top layout guide. It sounds like it's currently pinned to the top layout guide.

If it is pinned to the top layout guide, the best way to fix it is to delete the constraint, select the view, click the "Pin" tool at the bottom right of IB, and then select the top with a setting of zero.

This works fine in Xcode 5.1.1, but was a little buggy in earlier versions. Control+Drag onto the view generally forces you to select the top layout guide instead of the top of the view.