BetterLabel simplifies setting general styling properties which should normally be handled by NSAttributedString.

Motivation

On iOS is setting some UILabel properties very inconvenient as they can't be set directly on UILabel - so we need to use NSAttributedString. Let's see an example.

Imagine you should create label with custom font, text color, alignment, letter spacing (kern) and custom line height. Well then you should create an NSAttributedString and set it to the label.

let text = "Some text"
let paragraphStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
paragraphStyle.minimumLineHeight = 15
paragraphStyle.maximumLineHeight = 15
paragraphStyle.alignment = .center
let textAttr = NSAttributedString(string: text, attributes: [
    .font: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 10),
    .foregroundColor: UIColor.blue,
    .kern: 1.2,
    .paragraphStyle: paragraphStyle
])
someLabel.attributedText = textAttr

And usually you just have a label which should keep all the styling and you just want to change the text. Well with NSAttributedString you have store the attributes somewhere and it all becomes so complicated. 😬

What you want is to set the style of the label and then later just set the text it should display! And that's where BetterLabel becomes very useful.

Just define the style:

betterLabel.font = UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 10)
betterLabel.textColor = .blue
betterLabel.kern = 1.2
betterLabel.lineHeight = 15
betterLabel.textAlignment = .center

And whenever you like, you just set the text you want to display!

betterLabel.text = "Some text"

Simple right? 😎

And imagine that you need some padding inside the label...well you might think about embedding the label in some container view or about subclassing the label. That's not necessary with BetterLabel (as it is better than UILabel 😎). Just set the insets!

betterLabel.contentInset = UIEdgeInsets(top: 15, left: 5, bottom: 10, right: 12)

That's nice right? 😃

Attributed label

Well BetterLabel itself has shortcuts for the most commonly used properties from NSAttributedString, but that might not be enough for your case. That's why BetterAttributedLabel exists. You just set the attributes property and later on the text and you're good to go.

betterAttributedLabel.attributes = [
    .font: .systemFont(ofSize: 10),
    .foregroundColor: UIColor.red
]
betterAttributedLabel.text = "That's how it's done with BetterAttributedLabel 😎"

That should be all that is needed 🙂

UIButton extension

To make a BetterLabel even better, you can set an attributed title of UIButton using BetterLabel. 🎉

let button = UIButton(type: .system)
button.setBetterLabel(betterLabel, for: .normal)

What is not a good use case

If you need to display one string with different styles, that's not the purpose of BetterLabel and you should use common UILabel. The reason for this is that I think that combining String and NSAttributedString into single label component is a bit confusing.