VSCollectionKit
VSCollectionKit is a handy framework supporting functionality of a UICollectionView or UICollectionViewController in a much simpler way. VSCollectionKit also avoids a lot of collectionView related code hassle and duplicates.
VSCollectionKit Components
VSCollectionKit consist of VSCollectionViewController which is subclass of UIViewController with UICollectionView.
VSCollectionViewController works in association with 5 other parts like
- VSCollectionViewDataSource
- VSCollectionViewData
- VSCollectionViewDelegate
- VSCollectionViewLayoutProvider
- VSCollectionViewSectionHandller
Though the component names justify their functionality, a brief description for our strong foundations.
VSCollectionViewDataSource is a subclass of NSObject confirming to UICollectionViewDataSource mainly involved in handling or supplying data to our collectionView. It takes VSCollectionViewData and applies inserting and updating the changes to the current UICollectionView.
VSCollectionViewData is a struct that mostly contains the details about our data to be displayed on CollectionView. It contains an array of sections confirming to SectionModel protocol. Also, updates array containing details about the changes in data which is getting applied to a collection via VSCollectionViewDataSource.
The SectionModel, CellModel and HeaderViewModel protocols looks somthing like below
VSCollectionViewDelegate is subclass of NSObject confirming to UICollectionViewDelegate. This class mainly involves handling delegate events of collectionView. Please note that we are not using this delegate for determining the size of cell or supplementary view.
VSCollectionViewLayoutProvider is component who is responsible for supplying the layout information to the collectionView. VSCollectionKit uses UICollectionViewCompostionalLayout for cell and supplementaryview size information.
VSCollectionViewSectionHandller would supply the cell information, layout information and helps in handling events from the collectionView via VSCollectionViewSectionHandller.
That's the theoretical view VSCollectionKit and its components!!!!
How to use VSCollectionKit?
VSCollectionViewSectionHandller VSCollectionViewSectionHandller handles adding and removing of SectionHandler for the VSCollectionViewController. We can have n number of sections supported by collectionview via VSCollectionViewSectionHandller's addSectionHandler(handler: SectionHandler) function.
The protocol declaration of SectionHandler is as below.
Probably you caught them right!! Yes the collectionview related functions falls in the individual SectionHandler.It seems to be less complexed because it contains only the necessary functions to be implemented, if we still need more we can always go and extent it from components like VSCollectionViewDataSource and VSCollectionViewDelegate.
An example on how we can use VSCollectionKit to display grid of photos from local.
As you know, the VSCollectionViewController understands data by VSCollectionData, so our example is quite simple showing list of photos in CollectionView. We would be converting the list of image urls to VSCollectionData's SectionModel and CellModel.
A quick snippet of what i was talking about.
Having a thought on how we are providing the cell and layout information? Let's think it together! We need to create a class confirming to protocol SectionHandler, which is where we would be implementing the necessary functions to supply the cell and layout information to the collection view.
The final touch of how are we applying the data to collectionView shown below.
So we need to override func willAddSectionControllers() and add all the sectionHandlers which we would be using in our collectionView, provided each sectionControllers should confirm to protocol SectionHandler as shown above.
How to Use VSCollectionKit in project
Include the below line in the project cathrage file
git "https://github.com/Vinodh-G/VSCollectionKit.git" >= 0.3
and then call carthage update from the project folder where it is used.
