Custom UIView retained in memory - swift

Question

I am having an annoying memory issue with a custom UIView when trying to add it as a tableView footer in a VC. Here is what I do:
I declare a custom UIView class called tableViewHeader. My footer is supposed to display a logo and some text, so it has 2 global variables (a UIImage View & a TextView) and one init method to initialize this UIView class (i.e., by adding the two subViews and set some constraints).
In my VC, in the TableView's footerForSection method I declare a new tableViewFooter variable, set the sub-views (attach my PNG, etc.)
and return that view.
The code works fine to display the footer but it wrecks havoc on my memory - the moment I run my app and open the VC that contains that tableViewHeader my memory jumps by ~20MB (~ 20% jump) and doesn't get released once my VC is released (I checked, the VC itself gets correctly de-initialized but it doesn't show any drop in memory).
I tested a few things:
Without adding that footerView and opening/ closing the VC doesn't show that 20MB jump, so I am fairly sure that this is caused by this custom tableViewHeader...
I also checked to make sure the UIImage I load from my Assets is not too large but it's only 200Kb. On top the problem is more the fact that the memory doesn't get released after my VC gets released...
I've tried declaring my variables (the tableViewFooter variable and the sub-views within that new class) but that leaves my variables as nil when I try to add them as sub-views...
I am running out of ideas as to what the culprit is/ how to fix it so any help you could give me would be really highly appreciated!
My code is below - thanks in advance!
Francois
My TableFooterView class:
class MessageTableFooterView: UIView {
var shouldUpdateConstraints = true
var logoView: UIImageView!
var explanationTextView: UITextView!
var addFriendBtn: UIButton!
override init(frame: CGRect){
super.init(frame: frame)
logoView = UIImageView(frame: CGRect.zero)
logoView?.autoSetDimension(.height, toSize: 145)
logoView?.autoSetDimension(.width, toSize: 145)
self.addSubview(logoView)
explanationTextView = UITextView(frame: CGRect.zero)
explanationTextView?.isEditable = false
explanationTextView?.isSelectable = false
explanationTextView?.font = UIFont(name: "HelveticaNeue", size: 17)
explanationTextView?.textColor = .darkGray
explanationTextView?.textAlignment = .center
self.addSubview(explanationTextView)
}
required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
super.init(coder: aDecoder)
}
My tableView viewForFooter Method:
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, viewForFooterInSection section: Int) -> UIView? {
if MessageService.instance.savedMsgs.count > 0 {
return nil
} else {
let headerView = MessageTableFooterView(frame: CGRect.zero)
headerView.logoView.image = UIImage(named: "savedMessagesIcon")
headerView.explanationTextView?.text = "Blablabla"
return headerView
}
}