JSONViewControllers

[](https://travis-ci.org/Graham Perks/JSONViewControllers)

Usage

UITableViewController & UICollectionViewController subclasses useful when:

• You have shared cells across several table/collections
• the table's structure is variable, or unknown at build time

They:

• move cell logic to cell controller classes
• make the data source data-driven
• can load the table structure from JSON

To run the example project, clone the repo, and run pod install from the Example directory first.

JSON describes your table. The JSON can be downloaded, embedded, or generated at run-time. It describes the sections and rows of your table.

Each row has a set of attributes defined by the row's cell definition. For example, a cell displaying a name might define a "name" attribute. e.g.

[
    {
        "rows": [
            {
                "nib": "NameCell",
                "name": "Graham Perks"
            }
        ]
    }
]

This is a single-celled table. The outer array is for sections; the single section contains an array of rows. Interestingly cells can define key-value paths for their data, e.g.

            {
                "nib": "NameCell",
                "nameKeyPath": "user.name"
            }

The cell will display the value for the keypath "user.name" off the table view controller.

XIBs aren't required. Cells can be defined as classes, too:

            {
                "class": "NameCell",
                "nameKeyPath": "user.name"
            }

Pre-defined keys

action

An "action" key will trigger when the row is tapped. The value should be the name of a Selector; optionally taking a parameter which will be the cell definition dictionary.

    func menuItemTapped(cell: [String : AnyObject]) {
        let json = JSON(cell)

        // Log an event given the "analytics" entry in the row definition, e.g.
        Analytics.LogEvent(json["analytics"].stringValue)
        
        // And trigger the segue given the "segue" value.
        if let segueName = json["segue"].string {
            parentViewController?.performSegueWithIdentifier(segueName, sender: self)
        }
    }

An appropriate cell driving this logic might be:

            {
                "action": "menuItemTapped:",
                "nib": "NavigationCell",
                "analytics": "Navigator|food",
                "segue": "showFoodMenu",
                "caption": "Food Menu",
                "icon": "icn_foodmenu"
            }

JSON is optional. You can assign directly to the 'sections' array after building the view structure at run time.

Hints

• Add import SwiftyJSON.
• When designing a nib, first delete the UIView that Interface Builder gives you, and drag out a table or collection view cell.
• Make the XIB, class, and cell's reusable identifier all the same.
• Use auto-layout within the cells to define cell height.

Requirements

Uses SwiftyJSON to ease JSON manipulation.

Installation

JSONViewControllers is available through CocoaPods. To install it, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod "JSONViewControllers"

For an Objective-C take on this approach, see https://github.com/gperks/ASPTableViewController.

Author

Graham Perks, graham_perks@snapkitchen.com

License

JSONViewControllers is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.