New to Swift. I am trying to write a recipe-sharing app for fun. One of the features is to let users create a new recipe. On this page, users should be able to give an intro to the recipe to be created, upload an image THEN add a LIST of ingredients dynamically (as we have no idea how many ingredients in total beforehand).
I have created a UIViewController, which includes a UIViewTable, an image view and a "add another ingredient" button. I have created a class for the ingredient. And when the "add" button is pressed, a new "Ingredient" cell will be added to the table. However, I found that adjusting the UIViewTable height dynamically is quite hard.
I want my table to adjust its height according to the number of cells (rows). I haven't found much useful info online.
Or maybe I should've not even used this structure. Instead, just use UITableController (The entire page is a table)? But I got confused that some of the elements (image view, submit a recipe button, recipe-intro textfield etc) will be only created once. Why do I bother making them as prototype cells and add them to my view programmatically?
Thanks in advance!
First of all, welcome to Swift!
You put a few questions together, I will try to answer them one by one. Let's start with the simple stuff.
Don't try to change the height of UITableView based on the number of items. If you want to achieve similar functionality, take a look at UIStackView. Set fixed size for the tableView, ideally with constraints using auto layout.
UITableView is supposed to fill specified space and scroll items inside or show cell on top if there are not enough cells to cover all space.
UITableView is highly optimized to scroll over huge amount of cells as the cells are reused on the background. If you are new to the iOS world, take a look at this function https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uitableviewcell/1623223-prepareforreuse it can save you hours of debugging (I have been there)
UITableView vs UITableController
UITableController can save you a few lines of code, but using UITableView inside of UIViewController can give you more freedom and save you refactoring if your app is likely to change in the future. There is no specific advantage of UITableController
If you want to provide the extra elements (image view, submit button, text field etc), you can use several methods and this is where the UIViewController with your own UITableView comes in handy.
You can put some buttons, like a plus icon or "Done" button into the navigation bar, as the native Calendar app does.
You can put the static content (intro text field, image view) above the table view (visible always). Use constraints to place the static content on the viewController.view and constraint the table view under your static content. The table view will take less space on the view keeping the space for your content.
Insert your static content as a table view header (will scroll out with the content). Search "HeaderView" here on stack overflow to see how to achieve that.
Place your content over the tableView. If your button is small (rounded), you can place it over the tableView, eg. Twitter uses this for a new tween button.
Hope this answer your questions. Cheers!
Related
I am trying to understand how to structure different components within rows and sections. So my question are
1.would the top view,imageview and the components under it be separate cell or a single cell within a section.
2.What if one section does not have a imageview or a certain component. Would we just hide that view or would it be in a separate cell and that wont be called. And if hiding is the solution, how would you remove the space.
I am looking for just an abstract answer nothing specific. Just to understand how to structure views in tableviews
You pull all in one cell. For hiding any view (image, button, etc),
Put top content, image and comments on stack view.
Whenever there is no image, use imageView.hidden = true
Image space should automatically disappear.
Refer to this link for more elaborate tutorial
It depends on the preference of the developer. If you want a more flexible and easy to update/adjust view you can create a separate cell/nib file for that view. Additionally you can create it on one cell only but be careful because updating of design/view/content won't be easy.
If the imageview does not have a value I suggest that you always put a placeholder for that imageview so that the user will know that the image is not fetched.
I'm currently creating an update of my iOS application and I'm a bit stuck. I've tried to googling around but cannot find a decent answer on this.
I've a menu which links to different views. And I'm not really sure if I've done it the best method.
I've created a view, and added the links into a stack view. Should I considering changing it all to a tableview? or a collection view? Or maybe there's another way?
The current look:
Should I change this to a tableview? collection view? or something else? Or just let it stay as it is?
If the number of items in your menu changes at runtime and is large, you should use a table view, because a table view is good for efficiently displaying a screen's worth of items from a large list of items.
If the contents of your menu is small (under maybe two screenfuls of items) and fixed at compile time and you are using a storyboard, then you could use a table view with static cells, if you can make it look the way you want.
If the contents of your menu is small, then you can use a stack view (inside a scroll view) if that is easier for you. There is no particular advantage to using a table view over a stack view to display a small amount of content, unless you need other features of the table view (like the ability to select/deselect rows).
Based on the screen shot you posted, I'd either use a table view with static cells (since the screen shot is from a storyboard) or a stack view, depending on whether I can get the appearance I want from a table view. If, as in the screen shot, the buttons must be centered vertically, I'd use a stack view, because it's easier to vertically center the content with a stack view.
Look, the fact of have many itens on your screen is clear on the mobile applications, to make it easy, we have collecions view like UITableView and UICollectionView. On the UITableView's case, this implements the scrolling and have methods do handle the operations' list, you can see the documentation to check these methods: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uitableview.
Main reasons to use UITableView
Implements scroll behavior.
Independent of size screen you can access all itens.
Easy to detect interactions like tap on cell.
Easy to make changes, like insert and remove content.
The UITableView exists precisely to solve problems like you has.
I am writing a Swift app, and on my main screen I have a long scrollview with several regions of content in it (upcoming events, announcements, and then featured products, and finally some basic info). So it's this really long scroll, and you can swipe down to the bottom.
So visualize 4 boxes, if you will, stacked vertically.
The 3rd box shows featured products. This can be anywhere from 1 to 30 items, depending upon any filters the user has in their settings.
My first try was using a UITableView for region#3 inside of this parent scrollview, but the problem is it only shows the first few items/rows and then the rest you scroll inside the table (which is the default/natural behavior of a table, right?). Unfortunately, the requirement I have is that the inner table can't scroll - it needs to display everything at once and you have to scroll (in the main UIScrollView) to get to the bottom (not scroll inside the inner uitableview scroll). Also, everyone seems to say don't use UITableView inside of a scroll.
So how do I create some sort of list where I create one template (like how you would in a xib/tablecell, and then assign a data source to it, and then repeat down without scrolling? Should I use a tableview after all, and just make the height of it very high and turn scrolling off?
Do I somehow instantiate xibs in a for loop and assign them dynamically to some view?
Thanks so much!
Sounds like you want a Table View with Grouped style. That would make it fairly easy to keep your "4 boxes" segregated, and your "3rd box" would simply be 1 to 30 rows in that section.
On note: you don't want to have a "very tall" table view - or any other type of view, for that matter. You want to allow iOS to manage memory for you, and to load and display only those parts of your content that is visible at any one time.
In other words, use a table view like its designed to be used :)
I guess this question is more of a best practice question than a problem solving question.
I would like to have a page on my app that has a UITableView at the bottom of it and some buttons/text above the UITableView but instead of just the UITableView scrolling, I would like the whole page to scroll.
I have been searching around and some people say to put the UITableView inside of a UIScrollView and disable scrolling on it and recalculate the height so the table view is as tall as all of it's rows.
Then I have read some other people say just to put the buttons/text in a Table Row Header and just have that scroll with the whole table view.
Which is the better practice and are either of them frowned upon?
Thanks!
Open the main storyboard and on the bottom right hand side you should see a list of view controllers, buttons, gestures etc.. In that list there should be a controller called "page control" that opts for the page-scroll you are looking for as well as the continuous one which you are trying to get rid of, you can just insertt this in to your basic view controller (via drag and drop). As for the button responsible for the segue (turning the page) you can find that in the list too. I can't explain how to program the button to turn the page step by step as I am typing this on my phone at work right now. If you want I can edit this later in more detail
I'm trying to create a layout very similar to ABNewPersonViewController that will allow a user to create a new contact in my app. My app doesn't use AddressBook nor would it need several of the fields in the ABNewPersonViewController, so I'm trying to replicate the layout of ABNewPersonViewController in a storyboard.
I'm settling right now on the following solution...
View Controller
View
UIButton ('add photo' button, left-aligned)
Table View (~85% width to allow for 'add photo' button)
Cell w/ text field (first name)
Cell w/ text field (last name)
Table View (100% width)
Cells w/ remaining details
First, I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions on a better layout.
Secondly, I don't know how the vertical border can be implemented for certain cells (e.g., phone number has a left detail w/ the type [mobile, home, iPhone] and then text field at right w/ the actual number). Any ideas?
The contact picker looks to me like a UITableView that uses grouped cells. Each of the groups has that rounded look around it.
There are different types of UITableViewCells that are provided by the iOS SDK. The one that you are describing is called "Left Detail" in Interface Builder and programmatically is called UITableViewCellStyleValue2. You can set each cell individually based on what you want in the UITableViewController cellForRowAtIndexPath method.
EDIT:
A possible way to create this in IB is to create a UIView and then add an image container and two table views to it.
UIView (Primary View)
--> UIImageView (In top left corner.)
--> Grouped UITableView (In top right. Contains first, last, and company.)
--> Grouped UITableView (Below the above two items, goes across the screen. Contains the rest.)