Reaching UI Elements created by code at different class - swift

Question

I'm creating UICollectionViewCells programmatically. That cell has a Content View (I'm using it only like a decorative frame). Inside that view I create UILabel, UIImageView and another UILabel. All set ups are done when cell is initialized. All works perfect
At ViewController I want to reach that UI Components at method:
CellForItemAt
What will be the best way to do that? Now im working with viewTags to reach particular component, but maybe there is better way?
I need to reach it to fill it with data from CoreData
BR
iMat

Answer 1

As you have created your UICollectionViewCell's UI programmatically, you can have those UI elements as public variable in your UICollectionViewCell.
And Create a public method to set the data into your CustomCell's UI elements as like below.
class CustomCell:UICollectionViewCell{
var imageView:UIImageView!
var label1:UILabel!
var label2:UILabel!
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
//Initialize your imageView,label1 and label2
}
required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
}
func set(_ text1:String?, text2:String?, image:UIImage?){
imageView.image = image
label1.text = text1
label2.text = text2
}
}
In your cellForItemAt function pass your data to your custom cell as like below.
func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCell(withReuseIdentifier: "YourCustomCellID", for: indexPath) as! CustomCell
cell.set("1", text2: "2", image: yourImage)
return cell
}

Answer 2

Let's say you have your custom UICollectionViewCell subclass
class MyCell: UICollectionViewCell {
var item: Item?
...
func setUI() {
label.text = item.someProperty
...
}
...
}
You can downcast your cell as your subclass when you dequeued it
cell as! MyCell
... then you have access to subclass's methods, variables, etc.
func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCell(withReuseIdentifier: "identifier", for: indexPath) as! MyCell
cell.item = array[indexPath.row]
cell.setUI()
...
return cell
}