Efficient off-screen UIView rendering and mirroring - ios

Question

I have a "off-screen" UIView hierarchy which I want render in different locations of my screen. In addition it should be possible to show only parts of this view hierarchy and should reflect all changes made to this hierarchy.
The difficulties:
The UIView method drawHierarchy(in:afterScreenUpdates:) always calls draw(_ rect:) and is therefore very inefficient for large hierarchies if you want to incorporate all changes to the view hierarchy. You would have to redraw it every screen update or observe all changing properties of all views. Draw view hierarchy documentation
The UIView method snapshotView(afterScreenUpdates:) also does not help much since I have not found a way to get a correct view hierarchy drawing if this hierarchy is "off-screen". Snapshot view documentation
"Off-Screen": The root view of this view hierarchy is not part of the UI of the app. It has no superview.
Below you can see a visual representation of my idea:

Answer 1

Here's how I would go about doing it. First, I would duplicate the view you are trying to duplicate. I wrote a little extension for this:
extension UIView {
func duplicate<T: UIView>() -> T {
return NSKeyedUnarchiver.unarchiveObject(with: NSKeyedArchiver.archivedData(withRootObject: self)) as! T
}
func copyProperties(fromView: UIView, recursive: Bool = true) {
contentMode = fromView.contentMode
tag = fromView.tag
backgroundColor = fromView.backgroundColor
tintColor = fromView.tintColor
layer.cornerRadius = fromView.layer.cornerRadius
layer.maskedCorners = fromView.layer.maskedCorners
layer.borderColor = fromView.layer.borderColor
layer.borderWidth = fromView.layer.borderWidth
layer.shadowOpacity = fromView.layer.shadowOpacity
layer.shadowRadius = fromView.layer.shadowRadius
layer.shadowPath = fromView.layer.shadowPath
layer.shadowColor = fromView.layer.shadowColor
layer.shadowOffset = fromView.layer.shadowOffset
clipsToBounds = fromView.clipsToBounds
layer.masksToBounds = fromView.layer.masksToBounds
mask = fromView.mask
layer.mask = fromView.layer.mask
alpha = fromView.alpha
isHidden = fromView.isHidden
if let gradientLayer = layer as? CAGradientLayer, let fromGradientLayer = fromView.layer as? CAGradientLayer {
gradientLayer.colors = fromGradientLayer.colors
gradientLayer.startPoint = fromGradientLayer.startPoint
gradientLayer.endPoint = fromGradientLayer.endPoint
gradientLayer.locations = fromGradientLayer.locations
gradientLayer.type = fromGradientLayer.type
}
if let imgView = self as? UIImageView, let fromImgView = fromView as? UIImageView {
imgView.tintColor = .clear
imgView.image = fromImgView.image?.withRenderingMode(fromImgView.image?.renderingMode ?? .automatic)
imgView.tintColor = fromImgView.tintColor
}
if let btn = self as? UIButton, let fromBtn = fromView as? UIButton {
btn.setImage(fromBtn.image(for: fromBtn.state), for: fromBtn.state)
}
if let textField = self as? UITextField, let fromTextField = fromView as? UITextField {
if let leftView = fromTextField.leftView {
textField.leftView = leftView.duplicate()
textField.leftView?.copyProperties(fromView: leftView)
}
if let rightView = fromTextField.rightView {
textField.rightView = rightView.duplicate()
textField.rightView?.copyProperties(fromView: rightView)
}
textField.attributedText = fromTextField.attributedText
textField.attributedPlaceholder = fromTextField.attributedPlaceholder
}
if let lbl = self as? UILabel, let fromLbl = fromView as? UILabel {
lbl.attributedText = fromLbl.attributedText
lbl.textAlignment = fromLbl.textAlignment
lbl.font = fromLbl.font
lbl.bounds = fromLbl.bounds
}
if recursive {
for (i, view) in subviews.enumerated() {
if i >= fromView.subviews.count {
break
}
view.copyProperties(fromView: fromView.subviews[i])
}
}
}
}
to use this extension, simply do
let duplicateView = originalView.duplicate()
duplicateView.copyProperties(fromView: originalView)
parentView.addSubview(duplicateView)
Then I would mask the duplicate view to only get the particular section that you want
let mask = UIView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: yourNewWidth, height: yourNewHeight))
mask.backgroundColor = .black
duplicateView.mask = mask
finally, I would scale it to whatever size you want using CGAffineTransform
duplicateView.transform = CGAffineTransform(scaleX: xScale, y: yScale)
the copyProperties function should work well but you can change it if necessary to copy even more things from one view to another.
Good luck, let me know how it goes :)

Answer 2

I'd duplicate the content I wish to display and crop it as I want.
Let's say I have a ContentViewController which carries the view hierarchy I wish to replicate. I would encapsule all the changes that can be made to the hierarchy inside a ContentViewModel. Something like:
struct ContentViewModel {
let actionTitle: String?
let contentMessage: String?
// ...
}
class ContentViewController: UIViewController {
func display(_ viewModel: ContentViewModel) { /* ... */ }
}
With a ClippingView (or a simple UIScrollView) :
class ClippingView: UIView {
var contentOffset: CGPoint = .zero // a way to specify the part of the view you wish to display
var contentFrame: CGRect = .zero // the actual size of the clipped view
var clippedView: UIView?
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
clipsToBounds = true
}
override func layoutSubviews() {
super.layoutSubviews()
clippedView?.frame = contentFrame
clippedView?.frame.origin = contentOffset
}
}
And a view controller container, I would crop each instance of my content and update all of them each time something happens :
class ContainerViewController: UIViewController {
let contentViewControllers: [ContentViewController] = // 3 in your case
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
contentViewControllers.forEach { viewController in
addChil(viewController)
let clippingView = ClippingView()
clippingView.clippedView = viewController.view
clippingView.contentOffset = // ...
viewController.didMove(to: self)
}
}
func somethingChange() {
let newViewModel = ContentViewModel(...)
contentViewControllers.forEach { $0.display(newViewModel) }
}
}
Could this scenario work in your case ?