Schematic

A declarative Swift micro-framework for view layouts

The name was chosen because an electrical schematic shows the connections of a circuit. Since we're named after an electrical unit of power it only seemed fitting we tried to fit that theme.

Rationale

Take a look at this write up for an explanation of how this framework came to be:

• Building a Micro-Framework for Constraints

In summary, I wanted to go from this:

NSLayoutConstraint.activate([
    a.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: parentView.leadingAnchor, constant: 10.0),
    a.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: parentView.trailingAnchor, constant: -10.0),
    a.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: parentView.topAnchor, constant: 10.0),
    a.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: parentView.bottomAnchor, constant: -10.0)
])

and go to something like this:

a.applyLayout([
    .alignToEdges(of: parentView)
])

The major change is that now instead of using the Composite pattern and having to build so many arrays, we just have one simple class that acts as a Linked List node to avoid array creation overhead. This makes for a simpler application of constraints.

Vision

Wattpad iOS developers are actively using this in our app.

Now that this is open sourced, we want everyone to contribute additional features to it so that it stays with a clean interface while being more powerful.

Usage

Using Schematic is quite simple and the best part is that translatesAutoResizingMaskIntoConstraints gets set to false for you automatically.

The class Constraint has a bunch of useful extensions which you can use to declare your layout. For example, if we wanted to center a view view in a parent view parentView with a fixed size:

viewA.applyLayout([
    .center(in: parentView),
    .makeSize(equalTo: 20.0) // Infers that you want a 20x20 size
])

Another example, could be aligning a profile photo profileImageView to the right of a label usernameLabel while also centering both vertically in a parent view parentView

// Support laying out multiple views at once
[profileImageView, usernameLabel].applyLayout([
    .centerY(in: parentView)
])

profileImageView.applyLayout([
    .matchLeadingTo(parentView),
    .alignTrailing(to: .leading, of: usernameLabel, withOffset: -10.0)
])

usernameLabel.applyLayout([
    .matchTrailingTo(parentView)
])

To grab a reference to a constraint (NSLayoutConstraint), you'll need to call only a single layout:

// Returns the first constraint that was used to create this layout
let constraint = usernameLabel.applyLayout(
    .matchTrailingTo(parentView)
)

// The first constraint rule is done because for multiple constraints, it would be troublesome to return all of them.
// Here, the constraint could be centerX or centerY so this is best used for single constraints.
let constraint = usernameLabel.applyLayout(
    .center(in: parentView)
)

Example

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

Installation

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

pod 'Schematic'

License

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