simplest (rectangular) drop shadow for an UIView

Question

I've seen lots of snippets that either: are too complicated for something as simple as a drop shadow, requiring subclassing UIView and using quartz2d calls, or I can't get them to work.

I just want to do this on a view I'm adding as a subview to another one (the subview is taken from another viewController I'm just allocating - I know that's probably not nice but oh well), no IB or anything. what's the simplest / most accepted way to go about it? would it be different if I want it to work on iOS 4?

Answer 1

It's as easy as importing <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h> and using a similar snippet as below:

self.viewAboutContainer.layer.shadowColor = [[UIColor blackColor] CGColor];
self.viewAboutContainer.layer.shadowOpacity = 0.7;
self.viewAboutContainer.layer.shadowRadius = 4.0;
self.viewAboutContainer.layer.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(5.0f, 5.0f);    
self.viewAboutContainer.layer.shadowPath = [UIBezierPath bezierPathWithRect:self.viewAboutContainer.bounds].CGPath;