UITextField within UISearchBar in iOS 7

Try this out i am not sure but this should work as in iOS 7 searchbar has subview and inside that subview there are two subviews one of which is UITextField

UIView *searchbarview = [searchBar.subviews objectAtIndex:0];
UITextField *sbTextField = (UITextField *)[searchbarview.subviews lastObject];
[sbTextField removeFromSuperview];

CGRect rect = searchBar.frame;
rect.size.height = 32;
rect.size.width = 210;
sbTextField.frame = rect;

[sbTextField setAutoresizingMask:UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleBottomMargin];


UIBarButtonItem *searchBarNavigationItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:sbTextField];

[[self navigationItem] setLeftBarButtonItem:searchBarNavigationItem];

Create a UIView *textFieldContainer with your target frame, add your textfield to that UIView and then add that textFieldContainer as a navigation item. i.e. your approach remains the same just the textfield comes inside a container and you play with that container.

You should not put a UITextField in the UINavigationBar in iOS 7, this widget is already provided by Apple.

In iOS 7, you can simply use a UISearchDisplayController with a UISearchBar, and set:

searchDisplayController.displaySearchBarInNavigationBar = YES

The search bar will appear in your UINavigationBar, and it will play nice with the other UIBarButtonItems without all the hacks and manual frame sizing in your original iOS 6 solution.

One thing to note - if you are going to add this to a project that still supports OSes older than iOS 7, you'll want to make sure that you put a check around the call or your app will crash when running on older OSes.

if([searchDisplayController respondsToSelector:@selector(displaysSearchBarInNavigationBar)])
{
    searchDisplayController.displaysSearchBarInNavigationBar = YES;
}

See this section of the iOS 7 transition guide: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/TransitionGuide/Bars.html

In iOS 7, UISearchDisplayController includes the displaysSearchBarInNavigationBar property, which you can use to put a search bar in a navigation bar, similar to the one in Calendar on iPhone:

One other note - you should consider migrating to AutoLayout going forward so you don't have to do all that tedious frame manipulation. Apple recommends it, and probably for good reason (future devices with larger screens...?)

in iOS 7 to access Text Field you have to reiterate on level more. Change your code like this

for (UIView *subView in self.searchBar.subviews){
    for (UIView *ndLeveSubView in subView.subviews){
    if ([ndLeveSubView isKindOfClass:[UITextField class]])
        {
            searchBarTextField = (UITextField *)ndLeveSubView;
            break;
        }
    }
   }

But best way to clear backgournd of UISearchBar and setting searchbar icon in text field is:

[searchBar setBackgroundImage:[[UIImage alloc] init] ];//if you want to remove background of uisearchbar
UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed: @"search_icon.png"];
[searchBar setImage:image forSearchBarIcon:UISearchBarIconSearch state:UIControlStateNormal];