The UICollectionView "swipe-away" in iOS7 app manager?

Question

On any 2014+ iPhone or iPad, double-click the home button to see the "app manager"

This is a left-right UICollectionView BUT it has a "swipe-away" gesture .. swipe up. How is it done? It's not so easy to "remove" a cell from a UICollectionView.

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Footnote for googlers .. for the general problem of "peeling off", "tearing away", one cell from a collection view, here's a full tidy explanation: https://stackoverflow.com/a/24339705/294884 Hope it helps someone.

Answer 1

It can be much simpler than the comments on your question are suggesting.

Your cell should contain a view (the thing that you're going to drag off) and you add a UIPanGestureRecognizer to that view.

In the gesture's action method, you move the view up or down, and when it gets far enough off that you want to delete it, you just animate it off. There are plenty of questions here dealing with this part.

This leaves a gap in your collection and now you need to move things around. It turns out this is quite simple:

[_collectionView performBatchUpdates:^{
   [_collectionView deleteItemsAtIndexPaths:@[indexPath]];
} completion:^(BOOL finished) {
     // you might want to remove the data from the data source here so the view doesn't come back to life when the collection view is reloaded.
}];

The stuff to the right of the removed cell slides over and we're all good.

Another problem to get over: making sure your gesture recognizer and the collection view's one play nice together. Thankfully, that's not too tricky either.

[_collectionView.panGestureRecognizer requireGestureRecognizerToFail:pgr]; //where pgr is the recognizer you made for dragging the view off

This means in order for the collection view's pan gesture to do its thing, your one has to fail. So you'll want to set yours up so that it only works when panning up and down, and let the collection view still do its thing for left to right pans. In your gesture recognizers's delegate, implement the following method which simply checks if you're moving more on the x-axis or y-axis.

-(BOOL)gestureRecognizerShouldBegin:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)gestureRecognizer
{
    CGPoint translation =[gestureRecognizer translationInView:self.view];

    return(translation.x * translation.x > translation.y * translation.y);
}

Answer 2

I was looking for this functionality and using @mbehan suggestion i faked this functionality using UICollectionView.

What i did is i added a view of smaller size on a collection cell(Transparent background) and added a single pan gesture on CollectionView(not on each cell) then on pan gesture i move the view and it looks like the cell is moving. After view reaches some point i first hide it and then deletes the collection view cell.

Cell Hierarchy : collectionViewCell -> View(tag value==2) -> UILabel(tag Value == 1) Label is just used for placeholder purpose.

i am posting my code below:

- (UICollectionViewCell *)collectionView:(UICollectionView *)collectionView cellForItemAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    UICollectionViewCell *cell = (UICollectionViewCell *)[collectionView dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier:@"Cards" forIndexPath:indexPath];
    UILabel *lblNumber = (UILabel*)[cell.contentView viewWithTag:1];
    UIView *viewTouch = (UIView*)[cell.contentView viewWithTag:2];
    [viewTouch setHidden:NO];
    [lblNumber setText:arrCards[indexPath.row]];

    return cell;
}


- (UIEdgeInsets)collectionView:(UICollectionView *)collectionView layout:(UICollectionViewLayout*)collectionViewLayout insetForSectionAtIndex:(NSInteger)section {
    return UIEdgeInsetsMake(0, 50, 0, 30);
  }

-(BOOL)gestureRecognizerShouldBegin:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)gestureRecognizer
{

    if([gestureRecognizer isEqual:panGesture]) {
    CGPoint point = [(UIPanGestureRecognizer*)gestureRecognizer translationInView:collectionView_];
        if(point.x != 0) { //adjust this condition if you want some leniency on the X axis
        //The translation was on the X axis, i.e. right/left,
        //so this gesture recognizer shouldn't do anything about it
        return NO;
        }
   }
   return YES;
}

- (IBAction)panGestureCalled:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)sender {
    yFromCenter = [sender translationInView:collectionView_].y; //%%% positive for up, negative for down

    UIView *view = sender.view;
    CGPoint location = [view.superview convertPoint:view.center toView:collectionView_];
    NSIndexPath *indexPath = [collectionView_ indexPathForItemAtPoint:location];
    UICollectionViewCell *cell = [collectionView_ cellForItemAtIndexPath:indexPath];
    UIView *touchView = (UIView*)[cell.contentView viewWithTag:2];


    switch (sender.state) {
      case UIGestureRecognizerStateBegan:{
        originalPoint = touchView.center;
        break;
    };
      case UIGestureRecognizerStateChanged:{
        touchView.center = CGPointMake(originalPoint.x , originalPoint.y + yFromCenter);

        break;
    };
        //%%% let go of the card
      case UIGestureRecognizerStateEnded: {
        CGFloat velocityY = (0.2*[(UIPanGestureRecognizer*)sender velocityInView:collectionView_].y);

        if (velocityY < -30 && yFromCenter<0) {
            [self hideView:touchView withDuration:0.2 andIndexPath:indexPath];

        }else if ((yFromCenter< 0 && yFromCenter > -200) || yFromCenter > 0){

            CGFloat animationDuration = (ABS(velocityY)*.0002)+.2;
            [self resettleViewToOriginalPosition:touchView andDuration:animationDuration];

        }else
            [self hideView:touchView withDuration:0.2 andIndexPath:indexPath];

    };
        break;
      case UIGestureRecognizerStatePossible:break;
      case UIGestureRecognizerStateCancelled:break;
      case UIGestureRecognizerStateFailed:break;
  }
}


-(void)resettleViewToOriginalPosition:(UIView*)view andDuration:(float)duration{
[UIView animateWithDuration:duration
                      delay:0.0f
                    options: UIViewAnimationOptionCurveEaseOut
                 animations:^
 {
     [view setCenter:originalPoint];
 }
                 completion:^(BOOL finished)
 {

 }];
}
- (void)hideView:(UIView*)view withDuration:(float)duration andIndexPath:(NSIndexPath*)indexPath
{

[UIView animateWithDuration:duration
                      delay:0.0f
                    options: UIViewAnimationOptionCurveEaseOut
                 animations:^
 {
     CGRect frame = view.frame;
     frame.origin.y = -300;
     view.frame = frame;
 }
                 completion:^(BOOL finished)
 {
     [view setHidden:YES];
     CGRect frame = view.frame;
     frame.origin.y = 39;
     view.frame = frame;
     NSLog(@"View is hidden.");

     [arrCards removeObjectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
     [collectionView_ performBatchUpdates:^{
         [collectionView_ deleteItemsAtIndexPaths:@[indexPath]];
     } completion:^(BOOL finished) {
         // you might want to remove the data from the data source here so the view doesn't come back to life when the collection view is reloaded.
     }];
 }];
}

and keep pagingEnabled of CollectionView to NO and then it should be good to go.