SwiftUI numberpad(TextField) fail to update the binding variable - ios

I am trying to create a Textfield which allows user to enter information and update the binding variable. Generally, user needs to hit the "return" button after entering the data, so that the compiler will update the data. However, I am now using number pad which have no "return" button. Hence, the compiler fail to update the binding object. What should I do ?
Here is my code:
class UserSettings: ObservableObject {
#Published var systemCost = 0
}
#EnvironmentObject var usersettings: UserSettings
TextField("Please enter here", value: $usersettings.cost, formatter: NumberFormatter())
.keyboardType(.numberPad)
.textFieldStyle(RoundedBorderTextFieldStyle())
.font(.title)
.overlay(RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 10).stroke(Color("DB"),lineWidth: 1))
The cost keep on showing 0 (where the initial value of cost is = 0) after entering a new value.
Thank you so much

Related

Why is this SwiftUI state not updated when passed as a non-binding parameter?

Here's what I want to do:
Have a SwiftUI view which changes a local State variable
On a button tap, pass that variable to some other part of my application
However, for some reason, even though I update the state variable, it doesn't get updated when it's passed to the next view.
Here's some sample code which shows the problem:
struct NumberView: View {
#State var number: Int = 1
#State private var showNumber = false
var body: some View {
NavigationStack {
VStack(spacing: 40) {
// Text("\(number)")
Button {
number = 99
print(number)
} label: {
Text("Change Number")
}
Button {
showNumber = true
} label: {
Text("Show Number")
}
}
.fullScreenCover(isPresented: $showNumber) {
SomeView(number: number)
}
}
}
}
struct SomeView: View {
let number: Int
var body: some View {
Text("\(number)")
}
}
If you tap on "Change Number", it updates the local state to 99. But when I create another view and pass this as a parameter, it shows 1 instead of 99. What's going on?
Some things to note:
If you uncomment Text("\(number)"), it works. But this shouldn't be necessary IMO.
It also works if you make SomeView use a binding. But for my app, this won't work. My actual use case is a 'select game options' view. Then, I will create a non-SwiftUI game view and I want to pass in these options as parameters. So, I can't have bindings all the way down my gaming code just because of this bug. I want to just capture what the user enters and create a Parameters object with that data.
It also works if you make it a navigationDestination instead of a fullScreenCover. ¯\(ツ)/¯ no idea on that one...
A View is a struct, therefore its properties are immutable, so the view can not change its own properties. This is why changing the property named number from inside the body of the view needs this property to be annotated with a #State property wrapper. Thanks to Swift and SwiftUI, transparent read and write callbacks let the value being seen changed. So you must not pass number as a parameter of SomeView() when calling fullScreenCover(), but pass a reference to number, for the callbacks to be systematically called: $number. Since you are not passing an integer anymore to construct struct SomeView, the type of the property named number in this struct can not any longer be an integer, but must be a reference to an integer (namely a binding): use the #Binding annotation for this.
So, replace SomeView(number: number) by SomeView(number: $number) and let number: Int by #Binding var number: Int to do the job.
Here is the correct source code:
import SwiftUI
struct NumberView: View {
#State var number: Int = 1
#State private var showNumber = false
var body: some View {
NavigationStack {
VStack(spacing: 40) {
// Text("\(number)")
Button {
number = 99
print(number)
} label: {
Text("Change Number")
}
Button {
showNumber = true
} label: {
Text("Show Number")
}
}
.fullScreenCover(isPresented: $showNumber) {
SomeView(number: $number)
}
}
}
}
struct SomeView: View {
#Binding var number: Int
var body: some View {
Text("\(number)")
}
}
After all that said to obtain a valid source code, their is a little trick that has not been explained up to now: if you simply replace in your source code Text("Change Number") by Text("Change Number \(number)"), without using $ reference nor #Binding keywords anywhere, you will see that the problem is also automatically solved! No need to use #binding in SomeView! This is because SwiftUI makes optimizations when building a tree of views. If it knows that the displayed view changed (not only its properties), it will compute the view with updated #State values. Adding number to the button label makes SwiftUI track changes of the number state property and it now updates its cached value to display the Text button label, therefore this new value will be correctly used to create SomeView. All of that may be considered as strange things, but is simply due to optimizations in SwiftUI. Apple does not fully explain how it implements optimizations building a tree of views, there are some informations given during WWDC events but the source code is not open. Therefore, you need to strictly follow the design pattern based on #State and #Binding to be sure that the whole thing works like it should.
All of that said again, one could argue that Apple says that you do not have to use #Binding to pass a value to a child view if this child view only wants to access the value: share the state with any child views that also need access, either directly for read-only access, or as a binding for read-write access (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/state). This is right, but Apple says in the same article that you need to place [state] in the highest view in the view hierarchy that needs access to the value. With Apple, needing to access a value means that you need it to display the view, not only to do other computations that have no impact on the screen. This is this interpretation that lets Apple optimize the computation of the state property when it needs to update NumberView, for instance when computing the content of the Text("Change Number \(number)") line. You could find it really tricky. But there is a way to understand that: take the initial code you wrote, remove the #State in front of var number: Int = 1. To compile it, you need to move this line from inside the struct to outside, for instance at the very first line of your source file, just after the import declaration. And you will see that it works! This is because you do not need this value to display NumberView. And thus, it is perfectly legal to put the value higher, to build the view named SomeView. Be careful, here you do not want to update SomeView, so there is no border effects. But it would not work if you had to update SomeView.
Here is the code for this last trick:
import SwiftUI
// number is declared outside the views!
var number: Int = 1
struct NumberView: View {
// no more state variable named number!
// No more modification: the following code is exactly yours!
#State private var showNumber = false
var body: some View {
NavigationStack {
VStack(spacing: 40) {
// Text("\(number)")
Button {
number = 99
print(number)
} label: {
Text("Change Number")
}
Button {
showNumber = true
} label: {
Text("Show Number")
}
}
.fullScreenCover(isPresented: $showNumber) {
SomeView(number: number)
}
}
}
}
struct SomeView: View {
let number: Int
var body: some View {
Text("\(number)")
}
}
This is why you should definitely follow the #State and #Binding design pattern, taking into account that if you declare a state in a view that does not use it to display its content, you should declare this state as a #Binding in child views even if those children do not need to make changes to this state. The best way to use #State is to declare it in the highest view that needs it to display something: never forget that #State must be declared in the view that owns this variable; creating a view that owns a variable but that does not have to use it to display its content is an anti-pattern.
Since number isn't read in body, SwiftUI's dependency tracking detect it. You can give it a nudge like this:
.fullScreenCover(isPresented: $showNumber) { [number] in
Now a new closure will be created with the updated number value whenever number changes. Fyi the [number] in syntax is called a "capture list", read about it here.
Nathan Tannar gave me this explanation via another channel which I think gets to the crux of my problem. It does seem that this is a SwiftUI weirdness caused by knowing when and how it updates views based on state. Thanks Nathan!
It’s because the number isn’t “read” in the body of the view. SwiftUI is smart in that it only triggers view updates when a dependency of the view changes. Why this causes issues with the fullScreenCover modifier is because it captures an #escaping closure for the body. Which means it’s not read until the cover is presented. Since its not read the view body will not be re-evaluated when the #State changes, you can validate this by setting a breakpoint in the view body. Because the view body is not re-evaluated, the #escaping closure is never re-captured and thus it will hold a copy of the original value.
As a side note, you’ll find that once you present the cover for the first time and then dismiss, subsequent presentations will update correctly.
Arguably this seems like a SwiftUI bug, the fullScreenCover probably shouldn’t be #escaping. You can workaround by reading the number within the body, or wrapping the modifier with something like this, since here destination is not #escaping captured so the number will be read in the views body evaluation.
struct FullScreenModifier<Destination: View>: ViewModifier {
#Binding var isPresented: Bool
#ViewBuilder var destination: Destination
func body(content: Content) -> some View {
content
.fullScreenCover(isPresented: $isPresented) {
destination
}
}
}

SwiftUI list item not updated if model is wrapped in #State

Given
a View with a simple List
an ItemView for each element of the list
a Model for the app
a model value (Deck)
Tapping on a button in the main view, is expected the model to change and propagate the changes to the ItemView.
The problem is that the changes only propagate if the model struct is stored in the ItemView as a normal variable; but if i add the #State property wrapper these do not happen. The view will update but not change (like if the data has been cached).
Question 1: is this an expected behaviour? If so, why? I was expecting to have the ItemView to only update when the model change by observing it throw #State, this way instead the view will always refresh whenever the list commands it, even if the data is not updated?
Question 2: Is it normal otherwise to have the items of a list using plain structs properties as models? Using observable classes would create much more complexity when handling the array in the view model and also make more complicated the List refreshing/identifying mechanism seems to me.
In the example the model does not need the #State, since changes are only coming from outside, in real world i would need it when it's the view itself to trigger the changes?
This is a stripped down version to reproduce the issue (create a project and replace ContentView with following):
import SwiftUI
struct Deck: Identifiable {
let id: Int
var name: String
init(_ name: String, _ id: Int) {
self.name = name
self.id = id
}
}
struct ItemView: View {
// #State var deck: Deck // DOES NOT WORK !!! <-------------------
let deck: Deck // WORKS (first element is updated)
var body: some View { Text(deck.name) }
}
class Model: ObservableObject {
#Published var decks: [Deck] = getData()
static func getData(changed: Bool = false) -> [Deck] {
let firstElement = changed ? "CHANGED ELEMENT" : "0"
return [Deck(firstElement, 0), Deck("1", 1), Deck("2", 2)]
}
func changeFirst() { self.decks = Self.getData(changed: true) }
}
struct ContentView: View {
#StateObject var model = Model()
var body: some View {
List {
ForEach(model.decks) { deck in
ItemView(deck: deck)
}
Button(action: model.changeFirst) {
Text("Change first item")
}
}
}
}
Tested with Xcode 13 / iPhone13 Simulator (iOS 15)
Question 1
Yes, it is expected because #State and #Published are sources of truth. #State breaks the connection with #Published and makes a copy.
Question 2
If all the changes are outside (one-way connection) you don't need wrappers of any kind for the children when dealing with value types.
If you need a two-way connection you use #Binding when dealing with a struct/value type.
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc21/10022
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/managing-user-interface-state
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/managing-model-data-in-your-app

Object's property not updating in array SwiftUI

I'm picking the photos from the PHPicker and displaying them in the VStack using the ForEach loop in SwiftUI. I'm wrapping the image in an Object with 3 properties.
class UploadedImage: Hashable, Equatable {
var id: Int
var image : UIImage
#State var quantity: Int
init(id: Int, image: UIImage, quantity: Int) {
self.id = id
self.image = image
self.quantity = quantity
}
static func == (lhs: UploadedImage, rhs: UploadedImage) -> Bool {
return lhs.id == rhs.id
}
func hash(into hasher: inout Hasher) {
hasher.combine(self.id)
}
}
Then I'm adding that object in the array after the picker select the images, and then displaying on the screen using the ForEach.
if !uploadedImages.isEmpty {
ScrollView {
VStack{
ForEach(uploadedImages, id: \.self) { selectedImage in
HStack{
ZStack{
// some other code to display image...
}
Spacer()
HStack{
Button(action: {
if let index = self.uploadedImages.firstIndex(where: {$0.id == selectedImage.id}){
uploadedImages[index] = UploadedImage(id: selectedImage.id, url: selectedImage.url, quantity: (1))
}
}, label: {
Text("-")
})
Text("\(selectedImage.quantity)")
Button(action: {
if let index = self.uploadedImages.firstIndex(where: {$0.id == selectedImage.id}){
uploadedImages[index] = UploadedImage(id: selectedImage.id, url: selectedImage.url, quantity: selectedImage.quantity + 1)
}
}, label: {
Text("+")
})
}
}
.padding()
.border(Color.black, width: 2)
.cornerRadius(6)
}
}
}
}
}
In the ForEach loop, I'm showing two buttons, +, - to increase and decrease the quantity.
On that button the action is the following code.
if let index = self.uploadedImages.firstIndex(where: {$0.id == selectedImage.id}){
uploadedImages[index] = UploadedImage(id: selectedImage.id, url: selectedImage.url, quantity: selectedImage.quantity + 1)
}
But the quantity is not updating. I'm not sure why.
When I change the id in the new updated Object.
uploadedImages[index] = UploadedImage(id: 89282, url: selectedImage.url, quantity: selectedImage.quantity + 1)
Then the quantity is updating only once.
Any good solution to increase and decrease the quantity?
Data flow in SwiftUI can be a bit tricky to get used to initially, depending on what framework you’re coming from.
There are various ways to approach it from high-level perspectives, but given that your question is about this localized issue of a single View, its model, and a button, I will focus on data from a single View’s perspective.
To then understand how data flows between Views, how it interacts with SwiftUI’s View lifecycle, and more, I would recommend these two WWDC sessions:
Data Essentials in SwiftUI
Demystify SwiftUI
There’s also this document from Apple with a decent breakdown:
Model data.
And this section in the SwiftUI Tutorials: Managing state and life cycle
Returning to the View’s perspective.
The way you set up your data inside a View will be quite different based on two characteristics of your data:
Is the data a value type or a reference type?
Do you want SwiftUI to handle the lifecycle of your data or do you want to manage it yourself?
So on the simple end of that matrix, you have a value type that you let SwiftUI handle for you.
This is what #State is for.
Inside a View, you might use #State like this to deal with a string:
#State var name = “Bob”
but a struct would work as well:
#State var selectedUser = MyUserStruct()
The important thing to know about #State is that it is explicitly meant for this simple end of the possible scenarios.
#State
is intended to be used only within Views
needs the data to be a value type to function properly
is bound to the lifecycle of the View
It’s meant for data that represents state internal to your Views.
Note, that nothing has to be done to our data in this case, to make SwiftUI understand when to update the View. (At least for most use cases.)
Moving up in complexity:
What if you want SwiftUI to handle the data, but you are dealing with a reference type?
This is the setup you currently have.
In contrast to the value type example, SwiftUI needs additional help understanding when to update the Views that depend on reference types.
Therefore, any classes that should drive View updates need to conform to the ObservableObject protocol.
Further, within those classes, only properties marked #Published will actually drive View updates when those properties change.
To then use an #ObservableObject inside a View, you have a choice of a couple of property wrappers with very different behaviors:
#StateObject, #ObservedObject, and #EnvironmentObject.
#StateObject is the closest in its behavior to #State. The object is managed by SwiftUI and the lifecycle of an ObservableObject that is initialized as a #StateObject is bound to the lifecycle of the View in which it is initialized.
#ObservedObject and #EnvironmentObject don’t match our current location in the matrix of complexity, as they are meant for the case in which you don’t want SwiftUI to handle your data’s lifecycle (or not as directly).
But this actually gives us sufficient information to restructure your example and stay within our single View perspective.
Let’s first take your example literally and pretend that we just want to make those localized updates in an array, and that’s its.
For this case, #State would actually work, but we will need to change your UploadedImage model to a struct:
struct UploadedImage: Identifiable {
let id: Int
let image: Image
var quantity: Int
}
Two notes:
I changed your image to use SwiftUI’s Image type instead of UIKit’s UIImage. The latter would still work for the purpose of this example if you absolutely need to deal with UIImage instances.
Identifiable is a protocol that tells SwiftUI to use the id property (which you already had anyways) to identify data in places like ForEach. Therefore, we don’t have to conform to Hashable, nor do we need to tell the ForEach explicitly how to identify each UploadedImage.
Now we’ll use this in the View, via #State:
#State var uploadedImages = [
UploadedImage(id: 1, image: someImage, quantity: 4),
UploadedImage(id: 2, image: someImage, quantity: 8),
UploadedImage(id: 3, image: someImage, quantity: 16)
]
And as mentioned above, the ForEach can be simplified to:
ForEach(uploadedImages) { selectedImage in
// ...
}
And that’s actually all that is needed to make your example work.
But as others have pointed out, it’s likely that you may have other logic to handle, and it would potentially be nice to split out some of this non-UI logic to a separate view model, have the View interact with that model, and observe it for changes.
Usually, view models take the form of a class, so we change our approach to the reference type route we discussed above: our view model will need to conform to ObservableObject, use #Published to surface any data that should drive updates, and it gets handed to SwiftUI to manage via #StateObject.
Combined, this solution looks like this:
#MainActor class UploadedImagesViewModel: ObservableObject {
#Published var images = [
UploadedImage(id: 3, image: someImage, quantity: 4),
UploadedImage(id: 4, image: someImage, quantity: 8),
UploadedImage(id: 5, image: someImage, quantity: 16)
]
func increment(_ selectedImage: UploadedImage) {
if let index = self.images.firstIndex(where: {$0.id == selectedImage.id}){
images[index].quantity += 1
}
}
func decrement(_ selectedImage: UploadedImage) {
if let index = self.images.firstIndex(where: {$0.id == selectedImage.id}){
images[index].quantity -= 1
}
}
}
struct UploadedImage: Identifiable {
let id: Int
let image: Image
var quantity: Int
}
struct UploadedImagesView: View {
#StateObject var viewModel = UploadedImagesViewModel()
var body: some View {
if !viewModel.images.isEmpty {
ScrollView {
VStack{
ForEach(viewModel.images) { selectedImage in
HStack{
ZStack{
// some other code to display image...
}
Spacer()
HStack{
Button(action: {
viewModel.decrement(selectedImage)
}, label: {
Text("-")
})
Text("\(selectedImage.quantity)")
Button(action: {
viewModel.increment(selectedImage)
}, label: {
Text("+")
})
}
}
.padding()
.border(Color.black, width: 2)
.cornerRadius(6)
}
}
}
}
}
}
A few final final notes:
As you can see, the actual data remained in struct form. There are cases where you may actually want an array of other reference types, e.g. of other view models, but those cases are somewhat rare and hard to make work properly. This combination of a class for your ViewModel and a struct for the actual data model is the most common approach.
#MainActor is something related to Swift’s new concurrency model, and the details are out of the scope of this answer. But it’s a good idea to apply to view models / ObservableObjects in general, as it will ensure (and via compiler errors guide you to) only update the ViewModel from the main thread.

SwiftUI, how to bind EnvironmnetObject Int property to TextField?

I have an ObservableObject which is supposed to hold my application state:
final class Store: ObservableObject {
#Published var fetchInterval = 30
}
now, that object is being in injected at the root of my hierarchy and then at some component down the tree I'm trying to access it and bind it to a TextField, namely:
struct ConfigurationView: View {
#EnvironmnetObject var store: Store
var body: some View {
TextField("Fetch interval", $store.fetchInterval, formatter: NumberFormatter())
Text("\(store.fetchInterval)"
}
}
Even though the variable is binded (with $), the property is not being updated, the initial value is displayed correctly but when I change it, the textfield changes but the binding is not propagated
Related to the first question, is, how would I receive an event once the value is changed, I tried the following snippet, but nothing is getting fired (I assume because the textfield is not correctly binded...
$fetchInterval
.debounce(for: 0.8, scheduler: RunLoop.main)
.removeDuplicates()
.sink { interval in
print("sink from my code \(interval)")
}
Any help is much appreciated.
Edit: I just discovered that for text variables, the binding works fine out of the box, ex:
// on store
#Published var testString = "ropo"
// on component
TextField("Ropo", text: $store.testString)
Text("\(store.testString)")
it is only on the int field that it does not update the variable correctly
Edit 2:
Ok I have just discovered that only changing the field is not enough, one has to press Enter for the change to propagate, which is not what I want, I want the changes to propagate every time the field is changed...
For anyone that is interested, this is te solution I ended up with:
TextField("Seconds", text: Binding(
get: { String(self.store.fetchInterval) },
set: { self.store.fetchInterval = Int($0.filter { "0123456789".contains($0) }) ?? self.store.fetchInterval }
))
There is a small delay when a non-valid character is added, but it is the cleanest solution that does not allow for invalid characters without having to reset the state of the TextField.
It also immediately commits changes without having to wait for user to press enter or without having to wait for the field to blur.
Do it like this and you don't even have to press enter. This would work with EnvironmentObject too, if you put Store() in SceneDelegate:
struct ContentView: View {
#ObservedObject var store = Store()
var body: some View {
VStack {
TextField("Fetch interval", text: $store.fetchInterval)
Text("\(store.fetchInterval)")
}
} }
Concerning your 2nd question: In SwiftUI a view gets always updated automatically if a variable in it changes.
how about a simple solution that works well on macos as well, like this:
import SwiftUI
final class Store: ObservableObject {
#Published var fetchInterval: Int = 30
}
struct ContentView: View {
#ObservedObject var store = Store()
var body: some View {
VStack{
TextField("Fetch interval", text: Binding<String>(
get: { String(format: "%d", self.store.fetchInterval) },
set: {
if let value = NumberFormatter().number(from: $0) {
self.store.fetchInterval = value.intValue
}}))
Text("\(store.fetchInterval)").padding()
}
}
}

One view does not rerender when #State var changes based on Picker selection

Trying to build a simple MacOS app using SwiftUI. I have a View that contains a Picker bound to a State var. As a sanity check I have added a Text Views (the dwarves one and the volumes...itemName) that should also change with the Picker changes. And they do, but the View I want to rerender (the FileList) does not.
I suspect it has something to do with how I am trying to pass the new FileSystemItem (internal class) to the FileList. Like when the FilePanel rerenders the volumeSelection is back to 0 and the state is applied afterwards. So my problem is that I seem to be missing a fundamental concept on how this data is supposed to flow. I have gone through the WWDC info again and been reading other articles but I am not seeing the answer.
The desired behavior is changing the selection on the picker should cause a new FileSystemItem to be displayed in the FileList view. What is the right way to get this to happen? To state it more generically, how to you get a child view to display new data when a Picker selection changes?
struct FilePanel: View
{
#State var volumeSelection = 0
#State var pathSelection = 0
var volumes = VolumesModel() //should be passed in?
var dwarves = ["Schlumpy","Wheezy","Poxxy","Slimy","Pervy","Drooly"]
var body: some View {
VStack {
Picker(selection: $volumeSelection, label:
Text("Volume")
, content: {
ForEach (0 ..< volumes.count()) {
Text(self.volumes.volumeAtIndex(index: $0).itemName).tag($0)
}
})
FileList(item:volumes.volumeAtIndex(index: volumeSelection)).frame(minWidth: CGFloat(100.0), maxHeight: .infinity)
Text(dwarves[volumeSelection])
Text(volumes.volumeAtIndex(index: volumeSelection).itemName)
}
}
}
struct FileList: View {
#State var item : FileSystemItem
var body: some View {
VStack {
List(item.childItems){fsi in
FileCell(expanded:false, item: fsi)
}
Text(item.itemName)
}
}
}
#State is a state private to to the owning view, FileList will never see any change.
If VolumesModel was a simple struct turning FileList.item into a binding (in-out-state) may already work (the caller still needs to turn it's #State into a binding when passing it to the dependent using the $):
struct FileList: View {
#Binding var item : FileSystemItem
...
}
However, it feels as if VolumesModel was a more complex object having an array of members.
If this is the case the above will not suffice:
VolumesModel needs to be a class adopting ObservableObject
VolumesModel's important members need a bindable wrapper (#Published)
FileList.item should be turned into #ObservedObject (instead of #State or #Binding)
FilePanel.volumes also to be #ObservedObject wrapped
Hope that helps or at least points you into the right direction.

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