Overview

PVGTableViewProxy is a helper class to set up an UITableView where you can declare your data as a simple array of view-model objects and PVGTableViewProxy makes sure it gets rendered.

When developing QuizUp we quickly realized that most of the app (and most of all iOS apps) was just a collection of lists. This made us reach for UITableView but we immediately felt that it was no fun to use. Its verbose, delegate based API forced a lot of boiler-plate on us every time we needed to use it and being huge fans of React and its declarative, state-less approach to UI we wanted something similar for UITableView. Thus PVGTableViewProxy was born!

At the moment PVGTableViewProxy depends heavily on Reactive Cocoa.

Installation

PVGTableViewProxy is available through CocoaPods. To install it, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod "PVGTableViewProxy"

Usage

PVGTableViewProxy includes an example project within the Example subdirectory. In order to run the example project, you must install the dependencies via CocoaPods:

cd Example
pod install

Once dependencies are installed you can run the project by running the PVGTableViewProxyExample target.

Getting Started

First thing you need to do is create a view controller that has a UITableView. Then you create a PVGTableViewProxy and pass your table view and data to it:

self.items = @[[DemoCellViewModel new],
               [DemoCellViewModel new]
               [DemoCellViewModel new]];

PVGTableViewProxy *dataSource = [PVGTableViewProxy proxyWithTableView:self.tableView
                                                           dataSource:RACObserve(self, items)
                                                              builder:^(id<PVGTableViewProxyConfig> builder) {
                                                                UINib *nib = [UINib nibWithNibName:@"ExampleNib" bundle:nil];
                                                                [builder registerNib:nib forCellReuseIdentifier:@"exampleNibReuseIdentifier"];
}];

In the builder block you register your cell reuse identifiers. DemoCell has to fulfill the PVGTableViewCell protocol and DemoCellViewModel has to fulfill the protocol PVGTableViewCellViewModel. Having set this up you can modify self.itemsand your table view will update. To get a better grasp of PVGTableViewProxy taking a look at the example project is a good idea.

Architecture

PVGTableViewProxy

The class that does the heavy lifting, takes ownership of your table view and your data source as a RACSignal. PVGTableViewProxy is smart about when it needs to insert, delete and re-render cells.

PVGTableViewCell

The protocol your table view cells need to fulfill. The height method needs to return your cell height as a NSNumber and the setup method is called in cellForRowAtIndexPath.

PVGTableViewCellViewModel

The protocol your table view cell view models need to fulfill. They have the reuseIdentifier of the cell, the uniqueID which is a unique ID for your model objects (i.e. the data the cell represents) and cacheID which lets PVGTableViewProxy know whether the corresponding cell needs to be re-rendered or not.

PVGTableViewSimpleDataSource

The wrapper around your signal of data.

Unit Tests

PVGTableViewProxy includes a suite of unit tests within the Tests subdirectory. In order to run the unit tests, you must install the testing dependencies via CocoaPods:

cd Tests
pod install

Once testing dependencies are installed you can run the tests on the Tests target. The unit tests run on Travis CI and you can see the build status on the top of this page.

Authors

Jóhann Þ. Bergþórsson, [email protected]

Hilmar Birgir Ólafsson, [email protected]

Alexander Annas Helgason, [email protected]

License

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

More Info

Feel free to open an issue if you find a bug and if you want to contribute please submit a pull request!