Add a background image to the navigation bar

Recently I was asked to add a pale (off-white) color as the background color of a navigation bar, which I thought would just be a case of updating the tintColor property . However when I did this instead of getting the gradient effect that we were after all I ended up with was a solid off-white color.

After iOS 5.0

iOS 5.0 made it so easy to set the navigation bar background image:

- (id) initWithRootViewController:(UIViewController *)rootViewController navigationBarBackgroundImage:(UIImage *)backgroundImage
{
  
  self = [super initWithRootViewController:rootViewController];
  
  if(self){
    
    if (backgroundImage != nil){
#ifdef __IPHONE_5_0 
      if (__IPHONE_OS_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED >= __IPHONE_5_0){ 
        if ([[self navigationBar] respondsToSelector:@selector(setBackgroundImage:forBarMetrics:)]){
          [[self navigationBar] setBackgroundImage:backgroundImage forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault]; 
        }
      } 
#endif
    }

  }
  
  return self;
  
}

Before iOS 5.0

Using a category I decided to override the drawRect method in UINavigationBar and set the background as an image (with gradient).

.h

@interface UINavigationBar (BackgroundNavigationBar)
@end

.m

@implementation UINavigationBar (BackgroundNavigationBar)

- (void) drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
    UIImage *barImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"navigation_bar_gradient.png"];
    [barImage drawInRect:rect];
}

@end