UIBuilder

Pack of UIView extensions to simplify creation of UIView and other primary UI classes

Overview

UIBuilder privides SwiftUI style creation of the view, configuring it and returning the created view for iOS projects using UIKit library

UIBuilder class is the main actor in this show, the class takes an instance of any UIView object or UIView.Type and configures according to the later configuration in Builder Pattern style

Here are some examples of the usage and features:

1. Creating a simple view

let view = UIBuilder(UIView.self)
    .backgroundColor(.red)
    .frame(CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 100, height: 100))
    .tintColor(.blue)
    .tag(12)
    .view

UIBuilder takes the type of UIView, initializes an UIView object, configures backgroundColor, frame, tintColor, tag and finally returns the view object

NOTE: UIBuilder class contains all the computed/stored properties and most of the convenient methods of the target view, also it uses generic type ViewType which gives opportunity to "recognize" views with their types and provide appropriate methods for them, i.e. During building UIView there are properties of UIView class, but when UILabel is built, additional properties such as text, font, etc are also available

2. Creating a popular UIKit subclass of UIView

lazy var table = UIBuilder(UITableView.self)
    .delegate(self)
    .dataSource(self)
    .backgroundColor(.lightGray)
    .separatorStyle(.none)
    .view

let stack = UIBuilder(UIStackView.self)
    .translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints(false)
    .axis(.vertical)
    .alignment(.center)
    .distribution(.fill)
    .spacing(12.0)
    .view

UIBuilder takes the type of UITableView and UIStackView objects, configures them and returns the result view

NOTE: UIBuilder automatically manages to return same Type as given, so the input and output objects are always the same in compile and runtime

UIBuilder-1.1.0 supports most of the popular UIKit components, here is the list of supported views:

• UIView
• UIControl
• UILabel
• UIImageView
• UITextField
• UIButton
• UIStackView
• UIScrollView
• UITableView
• UICollectionView
• UITextView
• UISwitch
• UISegmentedControl
• UISlider
• UIStepper
• UIProgressView
• UIPickerView
• UIDatePicker
• UIPageControl
• UIActivityIndicatorView
• UIColorWell

In case of building views beyond this list, UIBuilder treats them like their super class, i.e. if a custom view RoundImageView is being built and it is a subclass of UIImageView, then the builder provides methods of UIImageView as the closest relative of the RoundImageView.

UIBuilder works in a hierarchical way, in other words, methods provided for building UIView are also present during UILabel or UIControl building and methods of UIControl are also available for UIButton and so on...

3. UIBuilder also supports configuring existing views

let button = UIButton()
let configuredButton = UIBuilder(button)
    .title("Tap here")
    .backgroundColor(.red)
    .titleColor(.blue)
    .image(UIImage(named: "hello"))
    .view

WARNING: In order to get the final configured view, developer can use view property that is the instance of builded object. if the calling of the view property is omitted, the result type is UIBuilder<ViewType> instead of ViewType object

4. UIBuilder also supports custom configuration closures for some specific cases

let field = UIBuilder(UITextField.self)
    .backgroundColor(.lightText)
    .borderStyle(.roundedRect)
    .delegate(self)
    .layer { layer in
        layer.shadowColor = UIColor.darkGray.cgColor
        layer.shadowOffset = CGSize(width: 10, height: 10)
    }.finally { view in
        view.inputView?.backgroundColor = .red
    }

In this specific case, UIBuilder configures UITextField

• layer(_:) method takes a non-escaping closure with input parameter typed CALayer for UIView.layer configuration
• finally(_:) method takes a non-escaping closure with input parameter view, so the developer can configure deep hierarchy properties which is not supported by UIBuilder library

5. UIBuilder provides a simplified way to create hierarchies too

let view = UIBuilder(UIView.self)
    .translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints(false)
    .backgroundColor(.lightText)
    .subView(
        UIBuilder(UIImageView.self)
            .translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints(false)
            .image(UIImage(named: "landscape"))
            .contentMode(.scaleAspectFit)
            .view, 
        { layout in
            layout.top(12.0).left(16.0).right(16.0).bottom(12.0)
        }
    ).view

subView(_:,_:) method takes an instance of UIView (which can also be created and configured by the another UIBuilder object inline) and closure with input parameter UILayout which provides simple layout methods for standard layouts

Here are the methods of UILayout

top(_:) -> UILayout - takes CGFloat value and arranges topAnchor of subView to the topAnchor of superView with required spacing

left(_:) -> UILayout - takes CGFloat value and arranges leadingAnchor of subView to the leadingAnchor of superView with required spacing

right(_:) -> UILayout - takes CGFloat value and arranges trailingAnchor of subView to the trailingAnchor of superView with required spacing

bottom(_:) -> UILayout - takes CGFloat value and arranges bottomAnchor of subView to the bottomAnchor of superView with required spacing

padding(_:) -> UILayout - takes CGFloat value and creates allsided padding, i.e. calls four above-mentioned methods

center(_:) -> UILayout - takes NSLayoutConstraint.Axis parameter and centers the subView to the superView according to axis (uses centerX and centerY anchors)

WARNING: UILayout uses layout constraints and anchors for arrangement, but for more simplification anchors like trailing and bottom are automatically trated as a negative values, i.e. bottom(16.0) means that the subView's bottomAnchor is aligned with (-16.0) space from superView's bottomAnchor

UILayout holds public properties - superView and subView under the hood so the developer can create further configurations with superView and subView

6. In addition to single view hierarchy configuration, UIBuilder supports addition of the multiple views in a single try

let view = UIBuilder(UIView.self)
    .translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints(false)
    .backgroundColor(.lightText)
    .subView(
        UIBuilder(UISwitch.self)
            .translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints(false)
            .isOn(false)
            .onTintColor(.orange)
            .view,
        UIBuilder(UILabel.self)
            .translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints(false)
            .text("subtitle")
            .textColor(.blue)
            .view)
    { layout in
        layout.alignHorizontally(
            left: 16.0,
            spacing: 8.0,
            right: 16.0,
            top: 4.0,
            bottom: 4.0
        )
    }

In case of addition two views, UILayout is turned into UILayoutDouble class so it supports two subViews, and provides three basic configuration group: Vertical alignment, Horizontal alignment and z index alignment for overlapping views. Each of the group has own specific methods to arrange two views and supports almost all the cases that can be required when creating a standard UI

In case of addition multiple views at once, UILayout is no longer supported as it becomes much more complicated and practically cannot support all the cases, so the user gets the list of subViews and can do any kind of configuration with native constraint & anchor configurations

Support

UIBuilder supports iOS 9 and higher versions, but certain properties require higher version if the project deployment target doesn't support them

Installing UIBuilder

UIBuilder supports Swift Package Manager

// swift-tools-version: 5.6

import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
    name: "UIBuilder",
    platforms: [
        .iOS(.v9)
    ],
    products: [
        .library(
            name: "UIBuilder",
            targets: ["UIBuilder"]
        ),
    ],
    dependencies: [],
    targets: [
        .target(
            name: "UIBuilder",
            dependencies: []
        )
    ]
)

Finally import to the swift file: import UIBuilder

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