Creating a 'Favourites' section in an app - ios

Question

I'm currently working on an app in which I would like the users to be able to favourite a button and that button then gets added to the 'Favourites' section for that particular ViewController.
The app is a soundboard so it is split into (currently) 2 characters, within those characters I have categories of sound files for the users to choose from, once the user selects a category it will load up the ViewController with a set of sounds which can be played by pressing the button (very simple I know).
I'm trying to implement a 'Favourite' function in order to allow the user to favourite the buttons of their choice and in doing so, the new 'favourited' button will be displayed in a new ViewController.
I've browsed through here and found some stuff in regards to NSUserDefaults
I'm new to Swift and iOS development as a whole so if someone could be kind enough to guide me in the right direction I would be very grateful.
I know how to set the Image of the favourite button to change whether it has been set as a favourite or not, I also noticed that it suggests I place the favourites in a UITableViewController. My app is currently using a UITabBarController with 4 different ViewControllers off them.
If you would like screenshots of my Storyboard to get a better understanding please let me know and I shall update the post, also if any code is required please let me know and once again, I shall update the post!
EDIT: I will happily add a button which when pressed loads a table view if someone knows how to add a normal button into a table view so when pressed it shows the favourites
EDIT 2: Image

Answer 1

try to do as follows-
Take a UITabBarController having one viewController as soundsViewController and another tableViewController as favouritesTableViewController shown as below image-
Now add these sample code to soundsViewController-
var favListArray:NSMutableArray = []
#IBOutlet weak var tableView: UITableView!
override func viewWillAppear(animated: Bool) {
super.viewWillAppear(animated)
if NSUserDefaults.standardUserDefaults().objectForKey("favList") != nil {
favListArray = NSMutableArray.init(array: NSUserDefaults.standardUserDefaults().objectForKey("favList") as! NSMutableArray)
}
}
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
}
override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
// Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
}
func numberOfSectionsInTableView(tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
// #warning Incomplete implementation, return the number of sections
return 1
}
func tableView(tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
// #warning Incomplete implementation, return the number of rows
return 10
}
func tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier("soundCell", forIndexPath: indexPath) as! TableViewCell
cell.titleLbl.text = NSString.localizedStringWithFormat("Sound %d", indexPath.row) as String
if favListArray.containsObject(cell.titleLbl.text!) {
cell.addTOFVrtBtn.setTitle("-", forState: UIControlState.Normal)
}else{
cell.addTOFVrtBtn.setTitle("+", forState: UIControlState.Normal)
}
cell.addTOFVrtBtn.tag = indexPath.row
cell.addTOFVrtBtn.addTarget(self, action:#selector(addToFav) , forControlEvents: UIControlEvents.TouchUpInside)
return cell
}
func addToFav(sender:UIButton) {
let cell = self.tableView.cellForRowAtIndexPath(NSIndexPath.init(forRow: sender.tag, inSection: 0)) as! TableViewCell
if favListArray.containsObject(cell.titleLbl.text!) {
favListArray.removeObject(cell.titleLbl.text!)
}else{
favListArray.addObject(cell.titleLbl.text!)
}
tableView.reloadData()
NSUserDefaults.standardUserDefaults().setObject(favListArray, forKey: "favList")
}
these is a sample code, here TableViewCell is subclass of UITableViewCell having titleLbl and addTOFvrtBtn.
Add below sample code to favouritesTableViewController -
varfavSoundList:NSMutableArray = []
override func viewWillAppear(animated: Bool) {
super.viewWillAppear(animated)
if NSUserDefaults.standardUserDefaults().objectForKey("favList") != nil {
favSoundList = NSMutableArray.init(array: NSUserDefaults.standardUserDefaults().objectForKey("favList") as! NSMutableArray)
print(favSoundList)
self.tableView.reloadData()
}
}
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
}
override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
// Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
}
// MARK: - Table view data source
override func numberOfSectionsInTableView(tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
// #warning Incomplete implementation, return the number of sections
return 1
}
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
// #warning Incomplete implementation, return the number of rows
return favSoundList.count
}
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier("cell", forIndexPath: indexPath)
cell.textLabel?.text = favSoundList.objectAtIndex(indexPath.row) as? String
return cell
}
Here is the o/p screen demo-
I hope this will help you or you can get an idea how to make Favourites list and Favourites section..Thanks

Answer 2

Don't think of it as favouriting a button, a button is just how you're displaying the data in your app - what you're really favouriting is the data itself, so in this case a particular sound file.
So, your current data is a list of sound files, or the path to those files. Your favourites list can be exactly the same. I imagine you might be simply getting a list of files from disk to display so your list of favourites will need to be stored differently. That could be in user defaults, or in a plist file, either way it's an array of strings and both are simple options to store the array.
When storing you just set the array into defaults with a key, or write it to a file. When you read back you should either read from user defaults and then make a mutableCopy or use NSMutableArray to read the file in so you have an editable instance afterwards and you can add and remove favourites from the list.
Your approach of using buttons to represent the sound files is probably a lot more code and effort than you require. Table views are specifically designed to show a list of things, and there's no reason that a table view can't look like a list of buttons (while being much more flexible and much less code to create).