Programmatically access members of a UIView subclass in a UIViewController subclass - swift

Question

I want to put all subview properties and my subview setup code in a UIView subclass and load that into my UIViewController subclass using loadView(). Then access the UIView subclass members without casting the view property of UIViewController all the time.
This is my UIView subclass AwesomeClass
class AwesomeView: UIView {
lazy var testView:UIView = {
let view = UIView()
view.backgroundColor = UIColor.red
self.addSubview(view)
return view
}()
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
}
required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
}
override func layoutSubviews() {
super.layoutSubviews()
testView.frame = CGRect(x: 10
, y: 10
, width: self.bounds.size.width - 20
, height: 100)
}
}
And my UIViewController subclass AwesomeViewController
class AwesomeViewController: UIViewController {
override func loadView() {
let view = AwesomeView()
self.view = view
}
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
}
override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
// Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
}
}
I could do something like:
var subclassedView:AwesomeView {
get {
return self.view as! AwesomeView
}
}
and
subclassedView.testView.backgroundColor = UIColor.blue
But is there a way to call testView directly with self.view in the AwesomeViewController?
Edit:
What I am looking for is Covariant return type in swift.

Answer 1

You can you something like this:
Instantiate an instance of AwesomeViewController in AwesomeView
class AwesomeView: UIView {
var exampleColorVariable:UIColor?
//here you instantiate your view controller
var awesomeViewController = AwesomeViewController()
lazy var testView:UIView = {
let view = UIView()
view.backgroundColor = UIColor.red
self.addSubview(view)
return view
}()
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
}
required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
}
override func layoutSubviews() {
super.layoutSubviews()
testView.frame = CGRect(x: 10
, y: 10
, width: self.bounds.size.width - 20
, height: 100)
}
}
then you can access any method in AwesomeView changing a little bit your code
class AwesomeViewController: UIViewController {
lazy var awesomeView: AwesomeView = {
let view = AwesomeView()
view.awesomeViewController = self
return view
}()
func setupView() {
view.addSubview(awesomeView)
// your constraints here
}
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
setupView()
// NOW YOU CAN ACCESS ANY METHOD IN YOUR VIEW awesomeView.yourFunction()
// or you access that variable
awesomeView.exampleColorVariable = .red // you can now omit UIColor in swift3
}
}