Pass the result to a Button within a UITableViewCell after executing an on tap closure? - ios

Question

I'm looking for any possible way of passing the result of an networking update to a button in a UITableViewCell as a closure.
I have some UITableViewCells that are products. In these cells, I have an 'Add to Cart' button. I set a buttonTap closure in my UITableViewCell cellforRowAtIndexPath method, setup a touch handler within the cell for the button, and when that handler is called, execute the buttonTap closure. I handle my cart updating on a cart object which lives on the main controller.
The result of the cart update action returns true if they can add more items to their cart. Then, I update the button accordingly. I like this approach because I don't have to deal with delegates and I can keep all of the cart logic itself far far away from the cell; the cell just knows how to make a button enabled/disabled/loading/etc.
/// Buttom tap callback callback.
public typealias Selection = () -> Bool
class MealTableViewCell: UITableViewCell {
var buttonTap: Selection?
// Runs when tapping the button
func didTapAdd() {
if let buttonBlock = buttonTap {
self.button.isLoading = true
// Simulate loading
DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: .now() + 0.4) {
self.button.enabled = buttonBlock()
self.button.isLoading = false
}
}
}
}
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let cell = .... (fetch cell)
cell.buttonTap = {
// returns true if the user can add more items to their cart
return self.cart.update(product: product, quantity: 1)
}
}
My question is that currently, my cart is all local with no API calls. I'm currently switching the cart over to an API driven one, with network calls to add and remove items. That means I can no longer return a BOOL, or return at all, from my cart.update(product:,quantity:) method as it is now an async call.
So, I can do something like rewrite that method signature to be
self.cart.update(product: product, quantity: 1, success: { canAddMore in
// API call succeeded
}, failure: { error in
// fall failed
})
The question is that how can I pass canAddMore to the tableViewCell? If I redefine what Selection means to take in a block that takes a bool as a param, I can't pass that param in from the controller as it would only be passed in when the block is executed on the cell itself.
How can I do something like
cell.buttonTap = {
cell.buttonTap = {
self.cart.update(product: product, quantity: 1), success: { canAddMore in
// !!!! What can I call here to pass canAddMore to the cell.
}, failure: { error in
}
}
}
canAddMore can be any value really, a BOOL is just this example. My big goal is to avoid coupling any knowledge of the cell's loading and buttons to the controller itself. If I use delegates, I would have to have a two way delegate makes the cell a delegate of the controller, and I've always felt that's the sort of wrong direction to approach this. I'm not positive it's really possible to pass the result of a closure back to the cell, but I am hoping there is!
EDIT: The big question I'm really trying to answer is if it is at all possible to pass data back to the cell (or any object) that originally called closure through that closure. There's a million ways to do data modifications in a table view, but that's sort of the main thing I'm trying to address.
I'm also "looking" to avoid storing the canAddMore state (e.g. the quantity remaining for that product) in the main 'products' array that powers the tableview. The initial state is set there, returned from a /products endpoint, but after that, inventory being available or not is returned by the carts API action.

Answer 1

I don't think you want to do what you think you want to do :)
In a nutshell, instead of trying to "talk back" to the cell that called the closure, you probably want to track the "canAddMore" state of each product in your Products data array, and then update the table row(s) when the state changes. So...
User taps "Add to Cart"
Give visual feedback in that row to show that you are processing the tap (gray out the button, or show a spinner, whatever looks good)
Call back to the closure to start the Add-to-cart API call
When the API call returns, update your local Products data to indicate the "canAddMore" state
reload the row(s) in the table to update the Button (make it active, inactive, change the title, whatever)
You almost certainly need to be doing something similar anyway, so the Buttons in each row will be updated when the user scrolls and the cells are reused.

Answer 2

A general approach is to update the cell's content with tableView.reloadRows(at: [indexPath], with: true) in your callback. This will call func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell for the specified cell. Don't forget that this has to be done in the main queue.