Actions

Actions provides a set of extensions to add closures to UIView and UIControl instances. Also brings some methods to UIBarButtonItem, UIGestureRecognizer, Timer and NotificationCenter, that allow using them with a closure instead of a pair of target/action.

With Actions, you will easily add actions this way:

// UIView
let imageView = UIImageView()
imageView.add(gesture: .swipe(.Left)) {
    print("Image swipped")
}

// UIControl
let button = UIButton()
button.add(event: .touchUpInside) {
    print("Button tapped")
}

let textField = UITextField()
textField.throttle(.editingChanged, interval: 0.5) { (textField: UITextField) in
    print("Text changed to: \(textField.text)")
}

// UIGestureRecognizer
let gestureRecognizer = UIRotationGestureRecognizer {
    print("Gesture triggered")
}

// UIBarButtonItem
let barButtonItem = UIBarButtonItem(title: "Title") {
    print("Bar button item tapped")
}

// Timer (formally NSTimer)
Timer.scheduledTimer(timeInterval: 5) {
    print("timer fired")
}

// NotificationCenter (formally NSNotificationCenter)
NotificationCenter.default.add(observer: self, name: "NotificationName") {
    print("Notification received")
}

Keep reading to know how!

Installation

Cocoapods

Add the following to your Podfile:

pod 'Actions'

Then run $ pod install.

And finally, in the classes where you need Actions:

import Actions

If you don’t have CocoaPods installed or integrated into your project, you can learn how to do so here.

Carthage

Add the following to your Cartfile:

github “ManueGE/Actions”

Then run $ carthage update.

If you need more info about Carthage you will find it here.

Usage

Supported classes

• UIView
• UIControl
• UIGestureRecognizer
• UIBarButtonItem
• Timer
• NotificationCenter

UIView ☝️

You can make your UIViews to respond to simple touches. The allowed gestures are members of the enum Gestures and their values are:

• tap: One finger tap, accept one Int parameter that indicate the number of required touches.
• swipe: One finger swipe, accept one UISwipeGestureRecognizer.Direction parameter that indicate the direction of the swip.
• multiTap: Tap with any number of fingers, accept two Int parameter that indicate the number of required fingers and touches.
• multiSwipe: Swipe with any number of fingers; accept one UISwipeGestureRecognizer.Direction parameter that indicate the direction of the swip and an Int parameter that indicate the number of required fingers and touches.

To add one of this gestures to a UIView you can do:

let view = UIView()

// Not any gesture argument means .tap(1):
view.addAction {
     print("view tapped")
}

// You can also make the closure have one argument (the own view):
view.addAction { (view: UIView) in
    print("view \(view) tapped")
}

// Add 3 tap gesture
view.add(gesture: .tap(3)) {
    print("View tapped 3 times")
}

// Add a multi swipe gesture with the view as closure argument
view.add(gesture: .multiSwipe(direction: .Left, fingers: 2)) { (view: UIView) in
    print("View \(view) swipped left with 2 fingers")
}

All the add action methods returns the UIGestureRecognizer added to the view, in case you need it.

UIControl ☝️

Assign actions to your UIControl events.

You can add three types of closures:

• Without any argument
• With one argument, it will be the control itself.
• With two arguments, the first one will be the control itself, the second one will be the UIEvent?.

You can add actions:

• To a single UIControl.Event, using the method add(event: UIControl.Event, action: () -> Void)
• To multple control events at the same time: add(events: [UIControl.Event], action: ()) -> Void)

Here there are some examples:

// Closure without arguments and single event
button.add(event: .touchUpInside) {
    print("button tapped")
}

// Closure with one argument and multiple events
textField.add(events: [.editingChanged, .editingDidEnd]) { (textField: UITextField) in
    print("Text did change: \(textField.text)")
}

// Closure with two arguments
button.add(event: .touchUpInside) { (sender, event) in
    print("Sender: \(sender), Event: \(event)")
}

Actions added using this methods can be removed using the method:

func removeActions(for events: UIControl.Event)

Note: Just the actions added using the Actions method will be removed!.

Throttle

Actions allows UIControl schedulling actions to be called after a specific time interval, and prevent it of being called more than once in that interval. In other words, if the action is scheduled again before the time interval expires, it cancels the previous call (if any) preventing the action to be called twice.

A typical example is a UITextField which will trigger a search every time the user enter some text. If this search implies a http request, it can lead to overload the server if you make a request every time the user enter a character. With throttle you can wait a few milliseconds to check if the user is still typing and just send the action if the user hasn't entered any character in a time interval.

You can use throttle this way:

textField.throttle(.editingChanged, interval: 0.5) { [unowned self] (textField: UITextField) in
    self.performSearch(with: textField.text)
}

Other than the UIControl extension, the Throttle class can be used standalone to add your custom throttles all over your app.

UIGestureRecognizer ☝️

Create UIGestureRecognizer with a closure instead of a pair of target/action:

// without argument
let recognizer = UIRotationGestureRecognizer {
    print("Gesture triggered")
}

// with argument
let recognizer = UIRotationGestureRecognizer { (recognizer: UIRotationGestureRecognizer) in
    print("Gesture \(recognizer) triggered")
}

UIBarButtonItem ☝️

Create UIBarButtonItem with a closure instead of a pair of target/action. You can create bar button items from its title, image or using a system type:

let imageTitle = UIBarButtonItem(image: UIImage(named: "image")!) {
    print("image item pressed")
}

let titleItem = UIBarButtonItem(title: "Title") {
    print("title item pressed")
}

let systemItem = UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .action) {
    print("system item pressed")
}

All these methods has some additional, optional arguments. They also can be used with closures that takes the UIBarButtonItem as an argument, for instance:

let imageTitle = UIBarButtonItem(image: UIImage(named: "image")!) { (item: UIBarButtonItem) in
    print("image item \(item) pressed")
}

Timer ☝️

Create a Timer with a closure instead of a pair of target/action. You can create timers in three different ways:

// Scheduele a timer
Timer.scheduledTimer(timeInterval: 5) {
    print("timer fired")
}

// create a timer with a fire date
let timer = Timer(fire: date, interval: 0.5, repeats: true) {
    print("timer fired")
}

// create a timer with a time interval
let timer = Timer(timeInterval: 0.5) {
    print("timer fired")
}

All these methods has some additional, optional arguments as repeats and userInfo. They also can be used with closures that takes the Timer as an argument, for example:

let timer = Timer(fire: date, interval: 0.5, repeats: true) { (timer: Timer) in
    print("timer fired \(timer)")
}

NotificationCenter ☝️

Add an observer to a NotificationCenter with a closure instead of a pair of observer/selector. You can do it in two ways, observations that would live until they are stopped manually or notifications that are bind to the lifetime of an object:

let center = NotificationCenter.default

// This observation will live forever until it is stopped manually
let action = center.observe(notificationName) {
    print("Notification received")
}

// Stop observing the notification
center.stopObserving(action: action)

// This observation will live until the observer is deallocated
center.add(observer: self, name: notificationName) { [unowned self] in
    print("observe notification from \(self)")
}

// It can be stopped manually by doing:
center.stopObserver(self) // name and object are optional paramteres for this method

These methods has some additional, optional arguments object: the object whose notifications the observer wants to receive.

Contact

Manuel García-Estañ Martínez
@manueGE

License

Actions is available under the MIT license.