LabelConfigurator

LabelConfigurator is a compact library for iOS designed to help configuring UILabels without the usual burden of setting all the text attributes in several steps, specially when we have substrings with different attributes.

It was created using a Builder Pattern to allow adding several attributes to a single label, but just setting all them at once when needed. The interface itself is very easy and straightforward, making this library adoption super fast. For more detailed examples please check the Usage section.

Requirements

The minimum requirements needed to use LabelConfigurator are:

• iOS 9.0
• Xcode 8
• Obj-C and Swift compatible

Installation

CocoaPods

You can use CocoaPods to add LabelConfigurator to your project. To install it, simply specify it in your Podfile:

source 'https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs.git'
platform :ios, '9.0'
use_frameworks!

target 'TargetName' do
  pod 'LabelConfigurator', '~> 0.3.0'
end

After specifying the new dependency on the Podfile, just run pod install to make sure you install the latest version of the library.

Carthage

Carthage is a decentralized dependency manager that builds your dependencies and provides you with binary frameworks.

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

github "fabioameida/LabelConfigurator" ~> 0.3.0

Run carthage update to build the framework and drag the built LabelConfigurator.framework into your Xcode project.

Usage

To import the library to your project just add the following line to your Swift file:

import LabelConfigurator

If you want to make a really simple UIFont and text color to your label, just add the following code:

self.myLabel.setLabelText("Some text")
            .set(font: UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 14))
            .set(textColor: .blue)
            .configure()

Please notice two important aspects about the previous code:

1. The first method being called is setLabelText(), which returns the UILabelBuilder that allows you to add all the needed attributes to the UILabel without any boilerplate code;
2. After adding all the attributes you just need call configure() at the end, which will apply all the defined attributes to the UILabel.

The previous code may look quite similar to the UIKit code you write to just change the font and text color. But when it comes to other common cases like setting a custom Font Tracking or Line Spacing, the case is different because that will imply creating an NSAttributedString.

To achieve this with LabelConfigurator you just need to do the following:

self.myLabel.setLabelText("Some text \n Other text")
            .set(font: UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 14))
            .set(textColor: .blue)
            .set(fontTracking: 4)
            .set(lineSpacing: 10)
            .configure()

Other common example is adding different text attributes to a substring. Now, you can do it like this:

let minimumAmount = "$5"

self.myLabel.setLabelText("Please donate \(minimumAmount) or more!")
            .set(font: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 12))
            .set(textColor: .black)
            .set(font: UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 13), onSubstring: minimumAmount)
            .set(textColor: .red, onSubstring: minimumAmount)
            .configure()

Advanced Usage

The most common customisations done on UILabels are covered with helper methods to allow you adding attributes as easily as possible as you can see on the previous examples.

However, not all the possibilities are covered (and we want to keep it that way) on UILabel attributes and also NSAttributedString.

The good this is that you can add your custom attributes you wanted to add to your NSAttributedString using two convenience methods to do so:

• func set(attribute: NSAttributedStringKey, value: Any, onSubstring substring: String)
• func set(attribute: NSAttributedStringKey, value: Any, onRange range: NSRange)

For example, if you want to add a strikethrough attribute to a substring on your UILabel, you can do as the following

let oldPrice = "$350"
let newPrice = "$299"

self.myLabel.setLabelText("New price \(oldPrice) \(newPrice)")
            .set(font: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 12))
            .set(textColor: .black)
            .set(textColor: .red, onSubstring: newPrice)
            .set(textColor: .lightGray, onSubstring: oldPrice)
            .set(attribute: NSAttributedStringKey.strikethroughStyle, value: 1, onSubstring: oldPrice)
            .configure()

All these examples can be found on the repository "Examples" project.

Author

If you want to get in touch, reach me on twitter: @fabioacalmeida

License

LabelConfigurator is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.