ViewConfigurator: A Swift repository from PSchu

ViewConfigurator

The clean way to setup your views!

Motivation
Requirements
Installation
TODOs
License

Motivation

Some iOS developers like to use storyboards, some like to create all their views and constraints in code. While we don't want to favor one approach over the other, this library is for the latter.

When creating and configuring views in code there's many lines to be written. And doing it all in viewDidLoad() makes for one behemoth of a method.

Swift allows to instantiate and configure our views right where we declare them. For Example:

class ExampleViewController: UIViewController {
	
	let view: UIView = {
    	    let view = UIView()
	    view.backgroundColor = .blue
	    view.alpha = 0.8
	    view.layer.cornerRadius = 8
	    view.layer.borderColor = UIColor.red.cgColor
	    view.layer.borderWidth = 0.5
	    return view
	}()
	
}

There even is the possibility to use instance variables, if you declare them lazy. For example:

struct ExampleColorModel {
    let primaryColor: UIColor
    let secondaryColor: UIColor
}

class ExampleViewController: UIViewController {
    let model: ExampleColorModel = ExampleColorModel(primaryColor: .blue, secondaryColor: .red)
    
    lazy var someView: UIView = {
        let view = UIView()
        view.backgroundColor = self.model.primaryColor
        view.alpha = 0.8
        view.layer.cornerRadius = 8
        view.layer.borderColor = self.model.secondaryColor.cgColor
        view.layer.borderWidth = 0.5
        return view
    }()
    
}

With this libary we want to achieve an even higher level of 'swiftiness'.

With Configurator our example now looks like this:

struct ExampleColorModel {
    let primaryColor: UIColor
    let secondaryColor: UIColor
}

class ExampleViewController: UIViewController {
    let model: ExampleColorModel = ExampleColorModel(primaryColor: .blue, secondaryColor: .red)
    
    lazy var someLazyView: UIView = .build { config in
        config
            .backgroundColor(self.model.primaryColor)
            .alpha(0.8)
            .cornerRadius(8)
            .borderColor(self.model.secondaryColor.cgColor)
            .borderWidth(0.5)
    }
    
}

Also the grouping of configurations is possible:

let standardConfiguration = UIView.configure
    .backgroundColor(.blue)
    .alpha(0.8)
    .cornerRadius(8)
    .borderColor(UIColor.red.cgColor)
    .borderWidth(0.5)

let view = standardConfiguration.build() // Creates a view from the standard configuration

let otherView = UIView.build { config in
    config
        .apply(standardConfiguration) // Applies the standard configuration
        .backgroundColor(.green) // Overrides the background color set by the standard configuration
}

Supported Classes

UIView
UIControl
UIButton
UILabel
UIImageView

Requirements

iOS 8.0+
Xcode 9.0+
Swift 4+

Installation

CocoaPods

CocoaPods is a dependency manager for Cocoa projects. You can install it with the following command:

$ gem install cocoapods

CocoaPods 1.1.0+ is required to build ViewConfigurator 0.1.0+.

To integrate ViewConfigurator into your Xcode project using CocoaPods, specify it in your Podfile:

source 'https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs.git'
platform :ios, '8.0'
use_frameworks!

pod 'ViewConfigurator', '~> 0.3.0'

Then, run the following command:

$ pod install

Carthage

Carthage is a decentralized dependency manager that automates the process of adding frameworks to your Cocoa application.

You can install Carthage with Homebrew using the following command:

$ brew update
$ brew install carthage

To integrate ViewConfigurator into your Xcode project using Carthage, specify it in your Cartfile:

github "ImagineOn/ViewConfigurator" ~> 0.3.0

Swift Package Manager

To use Configurator as a Swift Package Manager package just add the following in your Package.swift file.

import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
    name: "ViewConfigurator",
    dependencies: [
        .Package(url: "https://github.com/imagineon/ViewConfigurator.git", "0.3.0")
    ]
)

Manually

If you prefer not to use either of the aforementioned dependency managers, you can integrate Configurator into your project manually.

Git Submodules

Open up Terminal, cd into your top-level project directory, and run the following command if your project is not initialized as a git repository:

$ git init

Add Configurator as a git submodule by running the following command:

$ git submodule add https://github.com/imagineon/ViewConfigurator.git
$ git submodule update --init --recursive

Open the new ViewConfigurator folder, and drag the ViewConfigurator.xcodeproj into the Project Navigator of your application's Xcode project.

It should appear nested underneath your application's blue project icon. Whether it is above or below all the other Xcode groups does not matter.
Select the ViewConfigurator.xcodeproj in the Project Navigator and verify the deployment target matches that of your application target.
Next, select your application project in the Project Navigator (blue project icon) to navigate to the target configuration window and select the application target under the "Targets" heading in the sidebar.
In the tab bar at the top of that window, open the "General" panel.
Click on the + button under the "Embedded Binaries" section.
You will see two different ViewConfigurator.xcodeproj folders each with two different versions of the ViewConfigurator.framework nested inside a Products folder.

It does not matter which Products folder you choose from.
Select the ViewConfigurator.framework.
And that's it!

The ViewConfigurator.framework is automagically added as a target dependency, linked framework and embedded framework in a copy files build phase which is all you need to build on the simulator and a device.

TODOs

At the moment Only UIView specific properties are supported. In the future we're going to expand Configurator to work on all UIKit View Subclasses (like UIPageControl, UIScrollView e.g.). Also we want to provide some convenice configurations, like using UIColor for CGColor configurations, a shadow configuration set and extensions for third party libraries like ReactiveCocoa.

License

ViewConfigurator is released under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.

PSchu/ViewConfigurator