UISearchBar: clear background color or set background image

I prefer to just set the alpha to 0 so you can hide/show on demand.

// Hide
[[self.theSearchBar.subviews objectAtIndex:0] setAlpha:0.0];

// Show
[[self.theSearchBar.subviews objectAtIndex:0] setAlpha:1.0];

How to set background color in UISearchBar:

#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

Then make an outlet connection to search bar (say, objSearchbar), and use these lines :

for (UIView *subview in self.objSearchbar.subviews) 
{
    if ([subview isKindOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UISearchBarBackground")]) 
    {
        [subview removeFromSuperview];
        break;
    }
}

self.tweetSearchbar.layer.backgroundColor = [UIColor blueColor].CGColor;