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ListKit

ListKit allows you to use table views in your app without implementing the UITableViewDataSource protocol yourself. The framework provides different ways to initialize a table view with custom cells. ListKit uses generics to ensure that the content displayed in the table view matches the custom cells you are providing.

Instead configure a data source with your content and your custom cell:

dataSource = ArrayDataSource(array: ["Test", "Another One", "OK"], cellType: CustomTableViewCell.self)
tableView.dataSource = dataSource

Installation

Usage

You can find both examples below as part of the demo project in this repository.

Table View with Simple Custom Cell

A table view that doesn’t require a cell with a XIB file can be implemented as following:

class CustomTableViewCell: UITableViewCell, ListKitCellProtocol {
  var model: String? {
    didSet {
      self.textLabel!.text = model as String?
    }
  }
}

class ViewController: UIViewController {

  @IBOutlet weak var tableView: UITableView!

  var dataSource: ArrayDataSource<CustomTableViewCell, String>?

  override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    dataSource = ArrayDataSource(array: ["Test", "Another One", "OK"], cellType: CustomTableViewCell.self)
    tableView.dataSource = dataSource
  }

}

The most relevant steps for this setup are:

1. The CustomTableViewCell needs to implement the ListKitCellProtocol. That requires defining a model property with the type of content the cell can store.
2. The ArrayDataSource needs to be configured with the types of the both the custom cell and the type of content stored in the cell.
3. The ArrayDataSource needs to be initialized with the custom cell type and optionally with the initial content of the table view, represented by an array.

The result will look like this:

Table View with Custom Cell in XIB File

If you want to use a custom cell that’s layout is defined by a XIB file you need to use a slightly different API.

You will likely create a separate Swift file for your custom cell, it needs to implement the ListKitCellProtocol:

class CityCell: UITableViewCell, ListKitCellProtocol {

    @IBOutlet var mainImageView: UIImageView!
    @IBOutlet var subLabel: UILabel!
    @IBOutlet var mainLabel: UILabel!

    var model: City? {
      didSet {
        if mainLabel != nil {
          configureCell()
        }
      }
    }

  override func awakeFromNib() {
    super.awakeFromNib()

    configureCell()
  }

  func configureCell() {
    mainLabel.text = model?.name
    subLabel.text = model?.country
    mainImageView.image = model?.image
  }

}

From within your view controller you can configure the table view and data source as following:

let cities = [city1, city2]

let nib = UINib(nibName: "CityCell", bundle: NSBundle.mainBundle())

dataSource = ArrayDataSource(array: cities, cellType: CityCell.self, nib: nib)
tableView.dataSource = dataSource

The setup is very similar to the first example, however you now need to provide a nib name additionally to the type of the custom cell.

The result from the demo looks as following:

Acknowledgements

I first encountered the idea of an ArrayDataSource in objc.io issue #1. This microframework is based on the idea from the article. This project takes a slightly different approach and also adds type safety by leveraging Swift generics.