Programming iOS 5, 2nd Edition

Chapter 16. Layers

The tale told in Chapter 14 and Chapter 15 of how a UIView works and how it draws itself is only half the story. A UIView has a partner called its layer, a CALayer. A UIView does not actually draw itself onto the screen; it draws itself into its layer, and it is the layer that appears on the screen. As I’ve already mentioned, a view is not redrawn frequently; instead, its drawing is cached, and the cached version of the drawing (the bitmap backing store) is used where possible. The cached version is, in fact, the layer. What I spoke of in Chapter 15 as the view’s graphics context is actually the layer’s graphics context.

This might seem like a mere implementation detail, but layers are important and interesting. To understand layers is to understand views more deeply; layers extend the power of views. In particular:

Layers have properties that affect drawing.

Layers have drawing-related properties beyond those of a UIView. Because a layer is the recipient and presenter of a view’s drawing, you can modify how a view is drawn on the screen by accessing the layer’s properties. In other words, by reaching down to the level of its layer, you can make a view do things you can’t do through UIView methods alone.

Layers can be combined within a single view.

A UIView’s partner layer can contain additional layers. Since the purpose of layers is to draw, portraying visible material on the screen, this allows a UIView’s drawing to be composited of multiple distinct pieces. ...