ios - How to make a UIViewRepresentable @ViewBuilder work with dynamic content?

Question

Is it possible to make a UIViewRepresentable view which takes a ViewBuilder argument work with dynamic content such as ForEach loops?

I have the following UIViewRepresentable view which I’m using to drop down to UIKit and get some custom UIScrollView behaviour:

struct CustomScrollView<Content:View>: UIViewRepresentable {

    private let content: UIView
    private let scrollView = CustomUIScrollView()

    init(@ViewBuilder content: () -> Content) {
        self.content = UIHostingController(rootView: content()).view
        self.content.backgroundColor = .clear
    }

    func makeUIView(context: Context) -> UIView {
        scrollView.addSubview(content)
        // ...
        return scrollView
    }

    func updateUIView(_ uiView: UIView, context: Context) {}

}

This works fine with static content as follows:

var body: some View {
    CustomScrollView {
        VStack {
            ForEach(1..<50) { number in
                Text(String(number))
            }
        }
    }
}

But it fails with dynamic content, showing a blank view:

var body: some View {
    CustomScrollView {
        VStack {
            ForEach(self.numbers) { number in
                Text(String(number))
            }
        }
    }
}

I understand that this is because when makeUIView() is called my dynamic data is empty, and it is later filled or updated. I evaluate my UIViewRepresentable’s content at init, and don’t update it in updateUIView().

---

How do you go about updating dynamic child content in updateUIView()? I tried capturing the @ViewBuilder parameter as an @escaping closure and evaluating it every time updateUIView() is called, which seems like the right solution (albeit inefficient?), but no luck so far.

Answer 1

The following might be helpful. It is not clear how absent CustomUIScrollView behaves (probably the issue is there), but using standard UIScrollView works with dynamic ForEach. Tested with Xcode 11.4 / iOS 13.4

struct CustomScrollView<Content:View>: UIViewRepresentable {

    private let content: UIView
    private let scrollView = UIScrollView()

    init(@ViewBuilder content: () -> Content) {
        self.content = UIHostingController(rootView: content()).view
        self.content.backgroundColor = .clear
    }

    func makeUIView(context: Context) -> UIView {
        content.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        scrollView.addSubview(content)
        let constraints = [
            content.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: scrollView.leadingAnchor),
            content.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: scrollView.trailingAnchor),
            content.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: scrollView.contentLayoutGuide.topAnchor),
            content.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: scrollView.contentLayoutGuide.bottomAnchor),
            content.widthAnchor.constraint(equalTo: scrollView.widthAnchor)
        ]
        scrollView.addConstraints(constraints)
        return scrollView
    }

    func updateUIView(_ uiView: UIView, context: Context) {}

}

struct TestCustomScrollView: View {
    private var items = Array(repeating: "Test", count: 50)
    var body: some View {
        CustomScrollView {
            VStack {
                ForEach(Array(items.enumerated()), id: .0) { i, item in
                    Text("(item) - (i)")
                }
            }
        }
    }
}