SwiftUI & MVVM: How to animate "list elements change" when view model changes the "data source" (`#Publish items`) itself - mvvm

Question

I am still relatively new to SwfitUI and Combine so maybe I am trying to do something very incorrectly but I just cannot see how to achieve what I am aiming to do with SwiftUI and MVVM.
Here is the scenario:
ViewModel class with a property #Published var items = [String]()
Main view (HomeView) that has a ForEach showing the items from its view model
HomeView has a #StateObject var viewModel: ViewModel
The HomeView ForEach uses the items from viewModel
ViewModel changes the items (in my case core data changes)
The HomeView ForEach reflects the change immediately
This all works, but what I want to do is animate the elements in the ForEach changing due to the viewModel.items changing.
What I can do is import SwiftUI into the ViewModel and use withAnimation to wrap the setting of new items. But this beats the purpose of the ViewModel as it now has a direct reference to UI code.
Here some code I have:
struct HomeView: View {
#StateObject var viewModel: ViewModel
var body: some View {
ForEach(items) { item in
Text(item)
}
}
}
import SwiftUI // This should not be imported as it breaks MVVM patter
class ViewModel {
#Published var items = [String]()
func onItemsChanged(_ newItems: [String]) {
withAnimation { // This works but will break MVVM patter
items = newItems
}
}
}
Any ideas if this can be achieve to make MVVM happy and work with SwiftUI?

Answer 1

Add animation to the container which hold your view items, like below
var body: some View {
VStack { // << container
ForEach(items) { item in
Text(item)
}
}
.animation(.default) // << animates changes in items
}
See next posts for complete examples: https://stackoverflow.com/a/60893462/12299030, https://stackoverflow.com/a/65776506/12299030, https://stackoverflow.com/a/63364795/12299030.