14.
Gestures
Written by Caroline Begbie
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Gestures are the main interface between you and your app. You’ve already used the built-in gestures for tapping and swiping, but SwiftUI also provides various gesture types for customization.
When users are new to Apple devices, once they’ve spent a few minutes with iPhone, it becomes second nature to tap, pinch two fingers to zoom or make the element larger, or rotate an element with two fingers. Your app should use these standard gestures. In this chapter, you’ll explore how to drag, magnify and rotate elements with the built-in gesture recognizers.
In the single card view, you’ll drag around and resize photo and text elements. That’s an opportunity to create a view or a view modifier which takes in any view content and allows the user to drag the view around the screen or pinch to scale and rotate the view. Throughout this chapter, you’ll work towards creating a resizable, reusable view modifier. You’ll be able to use this in any of your future apps.
Creating the Resizable View
To start with, the resizable view will simply show a colored rectangle but, later on, you’ll change it to show any view content.
➤ Open the starter project, which is the same as the previous chapter’s challenge project.
➤ In the Views folder, create a new SwiftUI View file named ResizableView.swift. Replace ResizableView with this code:
struct ResizableView: View {
// 1
private let content = RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 30.0)
private let color = Color.red
var body: some View {
// 2
content
.frame(width: 250, height: 180)
.foregroundStyle(color)
}
}
Going through the code:
- Create a
RoundedRectangleview property. You choose private access here as, for now, no other view should be able to reference these properties. Later on, you’ll change the access to pass in any view. - Use
contentas the requiredViewinbodyand apply modifiers to it.
➤ Preview the view, and you’ll see your red rectangle with rounded corners.
Creating Transforms
Skills you’ll learn in this section: transformation
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import SwiftUI
struct Transform {
var size = CGSize(width: 250, height: 180)
var rotation: Angle = .zero
var offset: CGSize = .zero
}
@State private var transform = Transform()
.frame(
width: transform.size.width,
height: transform.size.height)
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Creating a Drag Gesture
Skills you’ll learn in this section: drag gesture; operator overloading
var dragGesture: some Gesture {
DragGesture()
.onChanged { value in
transform.offset = value.translation
}
}
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.offset(transform.offset)
.gesture(dragGesture)
@State private var previousOffset: CGSize = .zero
var dragGesture: some Gesture {
DragGesture()
.onChanged { value in
transform.offset = CGSize(
width: value.translation.width + previousOffset.width,
height: value.translation.height + previousOffset.height)
}
.onEnded { _ in
previousOffset = transform.offset
}
}
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Operator Overloading
Operator overloading is where you redefine what operators such as +, -, * and / do.
import SwiftUI
func + (left: CGSize, right: CGSize) -> CGSize {
CGSize(
width: left.width + right.width,
height: left.height + right.height)
}
var dragGesture: some Gesture {
DragGesture()
.onChanged { value in
transform.offset = value.translation + previousOffset
}
.onEnded { _ in
previousOffset = transform.offset
}
}
Creating a Rotation Gesture
Skills you’ll learn in this section: rotation gesture; preview on device.
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@State private var previousRotation: Angle = .zero
var rotationGesture: some Gesture {
RotationGesture()
.onChanged { rotation in
transform.rotation += rotation - previousRotation
previousRotation = rotation
}
.onEnded { _ in
previousRotation = .zero
}
}
.rotationEffect(transform.rotation)
.gesture(dragGesture)
.gesture(rotationGesture)
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Creating a Scale Gesture
Skills you’ll learn in this section: magnification gesture; simultaneous gestures
@State private var scale: CGFloat = 1.0
var scaleGesture: some Gesture {
MagnificationGesture()
.onChanged { scale in
self.scale = scale
}
.onEnded { scale in
transform.size.width *= scale
transform.size.height *= scale
self.scale = 1.0
}
}
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.scaleEffect(scale)
Creating a Simultaneous Gesture
Whereas the drag is a specific gesture with one finger, you can do rotation and scale at the same time with two fingers. To do this, change .gesture(rotationGesture) to:
.gesture(SimultaneousGesture(rotationGesture, scaleGesture))
Creating Custom View Modifiers
Skills you’ll learn in this section: creating a
ViewModifier;Viewextension; using a view modifier; advantages of a view modifier
struct ResizableView: ViewModifier {
func body(content: Content) -> some View {
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private let content = RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 30.0)
private let color = Color.red
#Preview {
RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 30)
.foregroundStyle(.blue)
.modifier(ResizableView())
}
Using Your Custom View Modifier
In the preview, you used .modifier(ResizableView()). You can improve this by adding a “pass-through” method to View.
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extension View {
func resizableView() -> some View {
modifier(ResizableView())
}
}
.resizableView()
var content: some View {
ZStack {
Capsule()
.foregroundStyle(.yellow)
.resizableView()
Text("Resize Me!")
.font(.largeTitle)
.fontWeight(.bold)
.resizableView()
Circle()
.resizableView()
.offset(CGSize(width: 50, height: 200))
}
}
content
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.font(.system(size: 500))
.minimumScaleFactor(0.01)
.lineLimit(1)
View Modifier Advantage
One advantage of a view modifier over a custom view is that you can apply one modifier to multiple views. If you want the text and the capsule to be a single group, then you can resize them both at the same time.
Group {
Capsule()
.foregroundStyle(.yellow)
Text("Resize Me!")
.fontWeight(.bold)
.font(.system(size: 500))
.minimumScaleFactor(0.01)
.lineLimit(1)
}
.resizableView()
Other Gestures
- Tap gesture
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Type Properties
Skills you’ll learn in this section: type properties; type methods
var currentTheme = Color.red
Swift Dive: Stored Property vs Type Property
To create a type property, rather than a stored property, you use the static keyword.
public struct CGPoint {
public var x: CGFloat
public var y: CGFloat
}
extension CGPoint {
public static var zero: CGPoint {
CGPoint(x: 0, y: 0)
}
}
var point = CGPoint(x: 10, y: 10)
point.x = 20
let pointZero = CGPoint.zero // pointZero contains (x: 0, y: 0)
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Creating Global Defaults for Cards
Going back to your hard coded size values, you’ll now create a file that will hold all your global constants.
import SwiftUI
struct Settings {
static let cardSize =
CGSize(width: 1300, height: 2000)
static let thumbnailSize =
CGSize(width: 150, height: 250)
static let defaultElementSize =
CGSize(width: 250, height: 180)
static let borderColor: Color = .blue
static let borderWidth: CGFloat = 5
}
let settings1 = Settings()
let settings2 = Settings()
enum Settings {
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extension Settings {
static let aNewSetting: Int = 0
}
.frame(
width: Settings.thumbnailSize.width,
height: Settings.thumbnailSize.height)
var size = CGSize(
width: Settings.defaultElementSize.width,
height: Settings.defaultElementSize.height)
Creating Type Methods
As well as static properties, you can also create static methods. To illustrate this, you’ll extend SwiftUI’s built-in Color type. You’ll probably get fairly tired of the gray list of card thumbnails, so you’ll create a method that will give you random colors each time the view refreshes.
import SwiftUI
extension Color {
static let colors: [Color] = [
.green, .red, .blue, .gray, .yellow, .pink, .orange, .purple
]
}
static func random() -> Color {
colors.randomElement() ?? .black
}
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.foregroundStyle(Color.random())
Challenge
Challenge: Make new View Modifiers
View modifiers are not just useful for reusing views, but they are also a great way to tidy up. You can combine modifiers into one custom modifier. Or, as with the toolbar modifier in SingleCardView, if a modifier has a lot of code in it, save yourself some code reading fatigue, and separate it into its own file.
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Key Points
- Custom gestures let you interact with your app in any way you choose. Make sure the gestures make sense. Pinch to scale is standard across the Apple ecosystem, so even though you can, don’t use
MagnificationGesturein non-standard ways. - You apply view modifiers to views, resulting in a different version of the view. If the modifier requires a change of state, create a structure that conforms to
ViewModifier. If the modifier doesn’t require a change of state, you can make code more readable by adding a method to aViewextension and use that method to modify a view. -
staticor type properties and methods exist on the type. Stored properties exist per instance of the type.Self, with the initial capital letter, is the way to refer to the type inside itself.selfrefers to the instance of the type. Apple uses type properties and methods extensively. For example,Color.yellowis a type property.
Where to Go From Here?
By now you should be able to understand a lot of technical jargon. It’s time to check out Apple’s documentation and articles. Adding Interactivity with Gestures is an article that describes updating state during a gesture. Read this article and check your understanding of the topic so far.