Retaining button content in UICollectionView after scrolling with swift - ios

Question

I'm trying to make a UICollectionView that has infinite scrolling of buttons and the button's background is populated base on the result of http request to a server.
let reuseIdentifier = "Cell"
let screenSize: CGRect = UIScreen.mainScreen().bounds
let screenWidth = screenSize.width
let screenHeight = screenSize.height
let categoryApiUrl = "url"
let categoryImageField = "field"
class BrowseViewController: UICollectionViewController, UICollectionViewDataSource, UICollectionViewDelegate {
var categoryImgUrl:[String] = []
var buttonList:[UIButton] = []
func setupView(){
self.title = "Browse"
let layout: UICollectionViewFlowLayout = UICollectionViewFlowLayout()
layout.sectionInset = UIEdgeInsets(top: 20, left: 10, bottom: 10, right: 10)
layout.itemSize = CGSize(width: screenWidth/2-15, height: screenHeight/3.5)
collectionView = UICollectionView(frame: self.view.frame, collectionViewLayout: layout)
collectionView!.dataSource = self
collectionView!.delegate = self
collectionView!.registerClass(UICollectionViewCell.self, forCellWithReuseIdentifier: reuseIdentifier)
collectionView!.backgroundColor = UIColor.whiteColor()
self.view.addSubview(collectionView!)
}
func setupButton(cell: UICollectionViewCell, cellNumber: Int){
var button = UIButton.buttonWithType(UIButtonType.System) as UIButton
button.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, screenWidth/2-15, screenHeight/3.5)
button.backgroundColor = UIColor.orangeColor()
button.setTitle("Category", forState: UIControlState.Normal)
button.addTarget(self, action: "btnClicked:", forControlEvents: UIControlEvents.TouchUpInside)
buttonList.append(button)
cell.addSubview(button)
}
override func viewDidLoad(){
super.viewDidLoad()
let url = NSURL(string: categoryApiUrl)
let request = NSURLRequest(URL: url!)
NSURLConnection.sendAsynchronousRequest(request, queue: NSOperationQueue.mainQueue()) {(response, dataValue, error) in
let json = JSON(data: dataValue)
for(var i = 0; i < json.count; i++){
self.categoryImgUrl.append(json[i]["CATEGORY_IMAGE"].stringValue)
let imageUrl = self.categoryImgUrl[i]
let url = NSURL(string: imageUrl)
let data = NSData(contentsOfURL: url!)
let image = UIImage(data: data!)
self.buttonList[i].setBackgroundImage(image, forState: .Normal)
}
}
override func numberOfSectionsInCollectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView) -> Int {
//#warning Incomplete method implementation -- Return the number of sections
return 1
}
override func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, numberOfItemsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
//#warning Incomplete method implementation -- Return the number of items in the section
return 10;
}
override func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier(reuseIdentifier, forIndexPath: indexPath) as UICollectionViewCell
let cellNumber = indexPath.row as Int
setupButton(cell, cellNumber: cellNumber)
// Configure the cell
return cell
}
override func scrollViewDidScroll(scrollView: UIScrollView) {
let offsetY = scrollView.contentOffset.y
let contentHeight = scrollView.contentSize.height
if offsetY > contentHeight - scrollView.frame.size.height {
numberOfItemsPerSection += 6
self.collectionView!.reloadData()
}
}
}
Currently, the code is able to pull the image from the server and populate it as the button's background image.
However, since I made this collection view scrollable. When I scroll the view down and then back up, the background image of the previous buttons disappear.
I did some research but couldn't find a solution to it. The reason that the button disappears is because IOS only loads the cell that is visible on screen. So when I scroll down and then scroll back up, the previous cells are consider as "New Cells". Therefore the background image that was in it are now gone.
Questions:
Does anyone have an idea on how to retain the previous buttons even if we scroll down and then scroll back up? In addition, with my current code, I added the image onto the button inside the http request because the http request is always the last execution that finishes. Is there anyway to change the code so then the http request will be finish before the cells get loaded?

Answer 1

I would suggest to create uicollectionview in interface builder, subclass uicollectionviewcell, add one dynamic cell to collectionview, change its class to collectionviewcell you subclassed, drop uibutton on it, and everytime cell is being created, you would download the image.
override func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier(reuseIdentifier, forIndexPath: indexPath) as myCollectionViewCell
let cellNumber = indexPath.row as Int
//downloadimghere
cell.myButton.setBackgroundImage(downloadedImg, forState: .Normal)
return cell
}
This would download image everytime cell is being created. For more info you should checkout "lazy image loading". I think this is a better approach to your problem.
Now to your code, first of all you are not using your buttonList array, everytime cell is being created you create a new button and place it there, so you are not reusing already created buttons. If you fixed this, it might work like you wanted.
Here is another problem, since collectionview is reusing cells, everytime you create a button and place it on cell, it stays there, so basically now you are creating button on button. So if you want this to work correctly and have only one button on your cell, you need to remove previous button from the cell before you create it, you can do this in cellForItemAtIndexPath.
override func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier(reuseIdentifier, forIndexPath: indexPath) as myCollectionViewCell
//something like this
for view in cell.subviews(){
if view == <UIButton>{
view.removeFromSuperview()
}
}
return cell
}
There might be some syntax errors in my code, I didnt test it, but you get the idea how to do it.