SideTide

A Simple Declarative Text Input Delegate.

• Simple
  
  Greatly simplyfies how delegates for UITextField and UITextView are created and assigned.

• Declarative
  
  The delegate itself and all the methods that it should handle are declared in a declarative way. If you ever heard of SwiftUI you may get the idea instantly.

• Text Input Delegate
  
  Useable for any controls that conform to the UITextInput protocol and that can be assigned a delegate, like UITextField and UITextView.

Example

import SideTide
final class MyViewController: UIViewController {
    @IBOutlet weak var phoneNumberInputField: UITextField!
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        phoneNumberInputField.sideTideDelegate = TextFieldDelegate {
            ShouldBeginEditing { _ in print("Should begin was called."); return true }
            DidBeginEditing { _ in print("Did begin was called") }
            ShouldChange { (_, range, string) in return string == "o" ? false : true }
        }
    }
}

That’s it! All code that makes up the delegate is right there, directly at the UITextField. It’s no longer spread over code, somewhere in the implementation/extension of the UITextFieldDelegate. Even further: There is no need to conform to UITextFieldDelegate at all. If there are multiple text fields or text views there’s no need to check which text field is actually handled by the delegate. This avoids if/else hell, provides more clarity and makes code easier to understand and maintain.

Description

In the example above an instance of TextFieldDelegate gets created, and the methods the delegate should support are added in a declarative way. In this example ShouldBeginEditing, DidBeginEditing and ShouldChange are handled by the delegate. The closures given for every delegate method-type are called at the appropriate time, just as they would using a “normal” UITextFieldDelegate. In this example, ShouldBeginEditing and DidBeginEditing just print a message, whereas the ShouldChange refuses the charater “o” to be typed into the UITextField.

Usage

Using SideTide requires adding it as a Swift Package Dependency to your project. To do this in Xcode goto “File->SwiftPackages->Add Package Dependency”. In the Search/URL field of the dialog enter git@github.com:DG0BAB/SideTide.git if you’re using SSH or https://github.com/DG0BAB/SideTide.git for HTTPS.

In the swift file where you want SideTide to be avaliable, just enter import SideTide at the top.

Depending on the type of input control used, UITextField or UITextView, a TextFieldDelegate or a TextViewDelegate has to be created. Both are made available by the above import statement.

The method-types offered by the SideTide delegates are very intuitive and follow the method-names of the corresponding UITextFieldDelegate or UITextViewDelegate

The TextFieldDelegate offers the following method-types

• ShouldBeginEditing(_: @escaping (UITextField) -> Bool)
• DidBeginEditing(_: @escaping (UITextField) -> Void)
• ShouldEndEditing(_: @escaping (UITextField) -> Bool)
• DidEndEditing(_: @escaping (UITextField) -> Void)
• DidEndEditingWithReason(_: @escaping (UITextField, UITextField.DidEndEditingReason) -> Void)
• ShouldChange(_: @escaping (UITextField, NSRange, String) -> Bool)
• ShouldClear(_: @escaping (UITextField) -> Bool)
• ShouldReturn(_: @escaping (UITextField) -> Bool)
• DidChangeSelection(_: @escaping (UITextField) -> Void)

The first parameter ($0) to every closure is alsways the instance of the UITextField the delegate is associated with.

The TextViewDelegate offers the following method-types

• ShouldBeginEditing(_: @escaping (UITextView) -> Bool)
• DidBeginEditing(_: @escaping (UITextView) -> Void)
• ShouldEndEditing(_: @escaping (UITextView) -> Bool)
• DidEndEditing(_: @escaping (UITextView) -> Void)
• ShouldChange(_: @escaping (UITextView, NSRange, String) -> Bool)
• DidChange(_: @escaping (UITextView) -> Void)
• DidChangeSelection(_: @escaping (UITextView) -> Void)
• ShouldInteractWithAttachment(_: @escaping (TextInputType, NSTextAttachment, NSRange, UITextItemInteraction) -> Bool)
• ShouldInteractWithURL(_: @escaping (TextInputType, URL, NSRange, UITextItemInteraction) -> Bool)

The first parameter ($0) to every closure is alsways the instance of the UITextView the delegate is associated with.

The sideTideDelegate property

After an instance of the delegate is created it should be assigend to the sideTideDelegate property of the UITextField or UITextView. The sideTideDelegate property is provided as an extensions by the SideTide package. In contrary to the normal delegate property the sideTideDelegate property is holding a strong reference to the delegate. This makes direct assignment during creation possible (as shown in the example above). It’s possible to assign the created delegate to the normal delegate property, but since it’s a weak reference, it will be deallocated immediately. This doesn’t happen when using the sideTideDelegate property. Assigning a value to the sideTideDelegate also assigns that value to the delegate property of the UITextField or UITextView.