Blueprint
Declarative UI construction for iOS, written in Swift
Blueprint greatly simplifies the task of building and updating views as application state changes.
We still consider Blueprint experimental (and subject to major breaking API changes), but it has been used within Square's production iOS apps.
let rootElement = Label(text: "Hello from Blueprint!")
let view = BlueprintView(element: rootElement)
Generated documentation is available at square.github.io/Blueprint
Getting Started
Swift Package Manager
If you are developing your own package, be sure that Blueprint is included in dependencies
in Package.swift
:
dependencies: [
.package(url: "[email protected]:square/Blueprint.git", from: "0.3.0")
]
In Xcode 11+, add Blueprint directly as a dependency to your project with
File
> Swift Packages
> Add Package Dependency...
. Provide the git URL when prompted: [email protected]:square/Blueprint.git
.
Cocoapods
If you use CocoaPods to manage your dependencies, simply add BlueprintUI and BlueprintUICommonControls to your Podfile:
pod 'BlueprintUI'
pod 'BlueprintUICommonControls'
What does this library do?
Blueprint provides an architecture that allows you to:
- Declaratively define a UI hierarchy as pure values (Swift structs and enums).
- Display that hierarchy within your application.
- Update that hierarchy as application state changes (including animated transitions).
When should I use it?
Use Blueprint any time you want to display a view hierarchy, but don't want to manage view lifecycle (hint: managing view lifecycle is a large portion of most conventional UIKit code). There are times when you want to manage view lifecycle (complex animations and transitions are a good example), and for these cases you may want to stick with a conventional approach.
UIKit
?
How does it interact with Blueprint is not a replacement for UIKit! From the beginning, Blueprint has been designed as a compliment to all of the powerful tools that come with the platform. You can use Blueprint to manage the display of a single view controller, or of a single view representing a small part of the screen. Likewise, it's straightforward to host standard views and controls within a blueprint hierarchy, always leaving you with an escape hatch.
Documentation
Getting Started
Reference
Tutorials
Adding Blueprint to an existing project
Two modules are provided:
BlueprintUI
contains the core architecture and layout types.BlueprintUICommonControls
includes elements representing some commonUIKit
views and controls.
Blueprint is available via CocoaPods. Add it to your Podfile
to integrate:
target MyTarget do
pod 'BlueprintUI'
pod 'BlueprintUICommonControls'
end
Copyright 2019 Square, Inc.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.