iPhone : making UIBarButtonItem that is arrow shaped

I wrestled with several approaches on this one and finally figured it out using all the answers from several sources. There are a couple of tricks; this snippet will show it all (I was creating a custom rightNavButton, but you can adapt this easily for any UIBarButtonItem):

// Produces a nice "right arrow" style button that mirrors the back arrow// automatically added by the navController//UIImage *buttonImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"forwardButton.png"];UIButton *forwardButton = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];[forwardButton setBackgroundImage:buttonImage forState:UIControlStateNormal];[forwardButton setTitle:@"Meter" forState:UIControlStateNormal];forwardButton.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:12];forwardButton.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, buttonImage.size.width, buttonImage.size.height);[forwardButton addTarget:self action:@selector(showMeter)            forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc]            initWithCustomView:forwardButton];

Note: it turns out that if you try to set the target and action directly on the button item after assigning a custom view using a UIButton that it won't take - you have to set the target and action on the button itself - apparently the navBar uses the button provided verbatim.

This is the image I was using on the opaque black navBar (you can use anything, obviously): http://raretiger.com/images/forwardbutton.png

Make a custom background. See Creating a left-arrow button (like UINavigationBar's "back" style) on a UIToolbar for how.

You may -pushNavigationItem:animated: to make the built-in back button appear, although you cannot assign custom actions to it.

For undocumented methods, you may use

UIButton* backButton = [UIButton buttonWithType:101];

to create a back "button".

You could create an UIImageView or an UIButton with the required image then use:

[[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView: arrowButton];

Hope this helps.