Installation

Just add MessageViewController to your Podfile and install. Done!

pod 'MessageViewController'

Setup

You must subclass MessageViewController.

import MessageViewController

class ViewController: MessageViewController {
  // ...
}

Finish setup using a UIScrollView. Remember this can also be a UITableView or UICollectionView.

func viewDidLoad() {
  super.viewDidLoad()
  setup(scrollView: scrollView)
}

Customizations

You can customize any part of the UI that you want!

// Border between the text view and the scroll view
borderColor = .lightGray

// Change the appearance of the text view and its content
messageView.inset = UIEdgeInsets(top: 8, left: 16, bottom: 8, right: 16)
messageView.textView.placeholderText = "New message..."
messageView.textView.placeholderTextColor = .lightGray
messageView.font = .systemFont(ofSize: 17)

// Setup the button using text or an icon
messageView.set(buttonTitle: "Send", for: .normal)
messageView.addButton(target: self, action: #selector(onButton))
messageView.buttonTint = .blue

// Set custom attributes for an autocompleted string
let tintColor = .blue
messageAutocompleteController.autocompleteTextAttributes = ["@": [.font: UIFont.preferredFont(forTextStyle: .body), .foregroundColor: tintColor, .backgroundColor: tintColor.withAlphaComponent(0.1)]]

Autocomplete

The base view controller uses a MessageAutocompleteController control to handle text autocompletion.

This control uses a plain UITableView to display its autocomplete. Add a dataSource and delegate to display and handle interactions.

let tableView = messageAutocompleteController.tableView
tableView.register(UITableViewCell.self, forCellReuseIdentifier: "cell")
tableView.dataSource = self
tableView.delegate = self

Then register for autocomplete prefixes you want to respond to and set a delegate to handle when a prefix is found.

messageAutocompleteController.register(prefix: "@")
messageAutocompleteController.delegate = self

Your delegate needs to implement just one method.

func didFind(controller: MessageAutocompleteController, prefix: String, word: String) {
  // filter your data
  controller.show(true)
}

Note: You can perform asyncronous autocomplete searches. Just be sure to call messageAutocompleteController.show() when finished.

Acknowledgements