So, after fighting it for a while, I’ve realised that most line of business apps need a grid control. iOS just doesn’t have this out of the box, we have UITableView and UICollectionView but they don’t really support the notion of a selectable or editable dataset of records with multiple fields that have dropped down from a database.
So, I’ve been building…
I’ve taken a UIScrollView and built a sub-class (UIGridView). I’ve hand painted a header and a body view on-top of this. I can set headers like this -
gvmaintain.addheader("Work Order", width: 110, sortable: true)
gvmaintain.addheader("Job", width: 60, sortable: true)
gvmaintain.addheader("Crop", width: 110, sortable: true)
I can add rows like this -
gvmaintain.addrecord(fields: [no,job_no,crop,field,plot,work_type,pickpriority,status])
I’ve implemented a delegate to pass back when a user has touched on a row
func HitRowAtIndex(uigridview:UIGridView,index:Int)
I have gone as far as to implement properties to allow for read-only and multi-selection.
Futures. I’m now looking to add sorting, filtering and the ability to drag and drop change column order.
You have to wonder whether the alliance between Apple and IBM we will see a better out of the box solution in iOS 9?