How to prevent dequeued collection view cells from overlapping each other? - ios

Question

I've been trying to set up a collection view where I have the user submit several strings which I toss in an array and call back through the collection view's cellForItemAt function. However, whenever I add a row to to the top of the collection view, it adds the cell label literally on top of the last cell label so they stack like this. Notice how every new word I add includes all the other previous words in the rendering.
The code I have at cellForItemAt is
func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
if let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCell(withReuseIdentifier: "InterestsCell", for: indexPath) as? InterestsCell {
cell.interestLabel.text = array[indexPath.row]
return cell
} else {
return UICollectionViewCell()
}
}
and the code I have when the add button is pressed is
func addTapped() {
let interest = interestsField.text
array.insert(interest!, at: 0)
interestsField.text = ""
collectionView.reloadData()
}
I'm not sure what's going on. I looked everywhere and tried to use prepareForReuse() but it didn't seem to work. I later tried deleting cells by calling didSelect and the cells would not disappear again. Any help is appreciated!
This is the code I have in my custom collection view cell implementation in the event that this is causing the error

Answer 1

To do this paste these functions in your project
func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, layout collectionViewLayout: UICollectionViewLayout, minimumInteritemSpacingForSectionAt section: Int) -> CGFloat {
return 1
}
func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, layout collectionViewLayout: UICollectionViewLayout, minimumLineSpacingForSectionAt section: Int) -> CGFloat {
return 1
}
you can play around with the values :)

Answer 2

This can be easily implemented using UITableView. So try to use UITableView instead of UICollectionView.

Answer 3

It looks like you're adding a new label every time you set the text. If you want to lazily load the UILabel you need to add lazy
lazy var interestLabel: UILabel = {
...
}()
I wouldn't do it this way though, I would create a reference to the label
weak var interestLabel: UILabel!
Then add the label in your setupViews method
func setupViews() {
...
let interestLabel = UILabel()
...
contentView.addSubview(interestLabel)
self.interestLabel = interestLabel
}