I have just recently decided to transition from building UI elements using the storyboard to building them programmatically.
While looking up tutorials online, I saw some people liked to create their UIs using closures.
For example: let label: UILabel = { // they would customize their UI elements between the brackets }
I was wondering if this was some sort of conventional way used to build UI Elements ?
So far I've been sticking up with declaring my variables(including UI elements declaration) before the viewDidLoad method and declaring functions to configure them below it before calling them in the same 'viewDidLoad' method.
Is it wrong to do it this way?
There is nothing wrong in the way which you do, but using closures, is a common practice in iOS programming. Closures have multiple benefits such as all the view related configuration code is placed in a single place, the code is readable, and it becomes straightforward to make changes to the code and debug if there are any bugs present.
It’s about preference. But, in the way you described with closures, you won’t be able to access other properties even if you declare them before the property inside which you need them.
Related
How would I go about getting my extension to observe a property on the class it's extending while also being able to remove it at a later time?
For example:
I have a UIView, and I'd like to listen for frame changes within my UIView extension. When these changes occur I need to run some code that alters the views appearance based on the new frame.
The problem I'm having is, that while I can set up an observer, I can't figure out a way to remove it. There's no deinit() and I'd like the observer to hang around for the lifecycle of the UIView.
I'd rather not have to put this removal responsibility on the developer, and I don't want to subclass.
It doesn't even have to be KVO, if there's a better way I'd love to know about it.
The usual solution to this is to use an associated object as a deallocation spy. Associated objects are released when their attached object is deallocated, so you can run code in their deinit that you want to fire when the attached object goes away. That said, doing this really well in a multi-threaded world is a little tricky to say the least. I don't recommend building your own. Instead, I suggest PMKVObserver which will handle this for you. Even if you do choose to build your own, you should study how PMKVObserver does its magic so you're not overly naïve in your implementation.
Doing this sloppily (not worrying about multi-threaded race conditions) is not too hard in Swift, but to do it really well is better done in ObjC and bridged to Swift. Again, consult the code for the tricky corner cases.
While
Extensions can add new convenience initializers to a class, but they
cannot add new designated initializers or deinitializers to a class.
Designated initializers and deinitializers must always be provided by
the original class implementation.
So I think you cannot handle it in any nice way without subclassing.
I'm a bit of a newbie programmer, so I'm asking for people's opinions/advice on what they would do in the situation I'm in.
Background
Due to constraints of the library I'm using to achieve a "pop up" like window, I'm currently working on a UIView class (let's call it Menu) which creates UIImagePickers and various other View Controllers (VCs). However, since the UIView itself persists on top of any VCs it spawns itself, I'm forced to delegate any VC creation methods to the parentVC of Menu, so that I can dismiss the Menu view, create any VCs necessary, and then (sometimes) additionally restore the Menu view.
Issue
I'm currently copy and pasting hundreds of lines of delegate methods for any UIViewController that has a Menu view. These delegate methods are the same for every one of those view controllers, and exist there because the methods have UIViewController specific functions such as presentViewController. I'm tempted to pass the parentVC as a parameter to Menu in order to cut down on the amount of duplicate code, but this seems MVC-unkosher. What would be a good approach to this problem?
If I understood right, you can Just create an extension, like this
extension SomeClass: ClassesDelegates {
//some specific code that all Views will use
}
I'm tempted to pass the parentVC as a parameter to Menu in order to cut down on the amount of duplicate code, but this seems MVC-unkosher.
That's because MVC is a dated architectural choice, leading to exactly this kind of situation. That's where the "Massive View Controller" snark that you may have noticed here and there around the web comes from.
Your Menu depends on parentVC. Thus, we call parentVC a dependency. A fundamental precept of modern architectures is dependency injection, which allows you to eliminate the duplicate code you refer to and test Menu in isolation from its dependencies. Check out
Dependency Injection Demystified
Dependency Injection
Dependency Injection, iOS and You
Dependency Injection in Swift
So, fear not the use of parameters, your instincts are sound. Embrace the use of parameters, and preen that you are adopting the "25-dollar term for a 5-cent concept" (see first link), the Agile design pattern referred to as Dependency Injection. For bonus cool points, do not make that parameter a UIViewController. Define a protocol with just the access that Menu requires, and make that parameter anything that conforms to said protocol, and add an extension to UIViewController conforming to that protocol. That makes testing and reuse elsewhere easier; and more importantly, then you will be engaging in Protocol-Oriented Programming, which puts you right out on the cutting edge of trendy Swift design patterns. Nobody will call you a newbie then.
I have a "GrandParentViewController" that has all methods of my application. I have a subview "ParentViewController" that contains a few subviews "ChildVC" for which I want the methods to be delegated to the "GrandParentViewController". I currently have a delegate chain from the childVC >> parentVC >> GrandparentVC but it feels wrong. What is the IOS way of doing this?
It seems that single responsibility principle is violated in your code. Maybe it is a good idea to split GrandParentViewController to several classes?
Also make sure you know what is protocol in Objective-C and how it should be used.
I do not recommend to use NSNotifications since it is good and was designed for other cases then direct delegation.
I wouldn't say that there's a set iOS way. I do something similar to what you described because it's the natural way that my VCs should be related. Go with whatever paradigm helps you keep your code clean for future changes, modularized for reusability, and of course, functional.
I will say that if any communications between VCs don't fit with your paradigm, don't force it. Use NSNotifications instead.
Is there any possible way to detect every change on User Interface during runtime??
I'm trying to find all objects in the current app interface.
I'm trying to to get all nodes inspecting recursively the main Window, but, for example, how to know if the top viewcontroller changes or if it's added a uiview dynamically, or is presented a modalview??
The main objective is to have a library to do this..
Any idea, help?
Thanks!
You could write your own library based on this, using advanced Objective-C techniques. I do not recommend you to do this, since it mostly breaks MVC patterns on iOS. Depends on what do you want to use it for, maybe analytics?
So these are the options I believe, if you want to actively inspect UIView hierarchy. All options are pretty complicated though.
Swizzle methods such as addSubview and removeFromSuperview of UIView, so you could know when changes like that happens. Including the getters of frame and bounds, if you wish to know the position.
You could use KVO to watch properties such as: subviews, frame, bounds, superview to notice any changes. But at one point you would have to add the same object as the observer (could be singleton).
Decide for an interval that is fired by a NSTimer and go through the hierarchy recursively beginning at keyWindow on UIApplication. This would have a big performance impact though.
There may be other options, but these are the ones I believe to be the best choices.
I have a UIView I need to access the properties of from all around my app. I know you can't create a Singleton around a UIView object, so what might be a good way of doing similar?
E.g. The view has a label. From any view controller in my app I want to be able to change the text of this view (sitting in a parent view controller).
Thanks.
EDIT:
Success! Using KVO to track changes in my Singleton object worked a charm, and a very simple solution.
I think what you’re trying to do violates the separation of concerns of the MVC pattern: The only thing that should interact with a view is its controller. In your case, you should probably be creating a model that is watched by your view controller (maybe through key–value observing), and then the controller can propagate the necessary changes to your view.
If you know (read: you really know for now and forever!) that there will be at most one instance of that view alive at one point in time, you can just use a global variable to store that. Or use a class property on that view - which is as close as being a singleton as possible.
Or you might just fix your design, which has proven to be the better choice in every case I can remember. :) Just add some forward and backward references in your classes (and stick to MVC principle). It takes much less time to implement that worrying about those awkward workaround, and it will pay of rather sooner than later.