ViewController won't reload properly on first Simulator launch - ios

Question

I have a weird issue that I just found out when I re-installed and launched my project first time on Simulator
My main ViewController has a collection view that will show a list of recipes. After a recipe is added and navigated back to this screen, the list will reflect the update.
There is also a ScrollView that appears when recipe.count > 0 with subview containing buttons (to filter list by category). The scrollview reflect the update on the recipes but it won't work on the very first launch in Simulator.
I've tried reloading collectionview, fetching recipe data on viewDidAppear, viewWillAppear but no luck with the first-time launch.
How can I make sure the first app launch experience is the same with the subsequent launches? Is there any known issue with first-time launch on Simulator that I should know about?
Here is the code that creates buttons and add to ScrollView.
override func viewDidAppear(animated: Bool) {
super.viewDidAppear(animated)
fetchRecipe()
collection.reloadData()
if recipes.count == 0 {
categoryScrollView.hidden = true
categoryScrollViewHeight.constant = 0
} else {
populateCategoryScrollView()
}
}
func populateCategoryScrollView() {
//Create category sort buttons based on fetched category.name and add to scrollview
if recipes.count > 0 {
var categories: [String] = []
for recipe in recipes {
if let value = recipe.category {
let category = value as! RecipeCategory
categories.append(category.name!)
}
}
var distinctCategories = Array(Set(categories))
var widthStack = 0
if distinctCategories.count != 0 {
for subView in categoryScrollView.subviews {
subView.removeFromSuperview()
}
for i in 0..<distinctCategories.count {
//Pilot button creation to get width
let frame1 = CGRect(x: 0, y: 6, width: 80, height: 40 )
let button = UIButton(frame: frame1)
button.setTitle("\(distinctCategories[i])", forState: .Normal)
button.sizeToFit()
let buttonWidth = Int(button.frame.size.width)
var frame2: CGRect
if i == 0 {
frame2 = CGRect(x: 10, y: 6, width: buttonWidth+20, height: 30 )
} else {
frame2 = CGRect(x: 10 + widthStack, y: 6, width: buttonWidth+20, height: 30 )
}
widthStack += buttonWidth+32
let button1 = UIButton(frame: frame2)
let attributedTitle = NSAttributedString(string: "\(distinctCategories[i])".uppercaseString, attributes: [NSKernAttributeName: 1.0, NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.blackColor()])
button1.setAttributedTitle(attributedTitle, forState: .Normal)
button1.titleLabel!.font = UIFont(name: "HelveticaNeue", size: 13.0)
button1.layer.borderWidth = 2.0
button1.layer.borderColor = UIColor.blackColor().CGColor
button1.backgroundColor = UIColor.whiteColor()
button1.addTarget(self, action: "filterByCategory:", forControlEvents: UIControlEvents.TouchUpInside)
self.categoryScrollView.addSubview(button1)
}
}
}
}

Answer 1

The first time you enter the application, the recipes.count is 0, so you are hiding the scroll view by the constraint categoryScrollViewHeight.constant = 0. So next time you create a new recipe, the scroll view is still with a zero height. That's why you didn't see the scroll on first time launch.