What is the iOS equivalent of Android's colors.xml

Question

In android there is an XML file as res/values/colors.xml that lets you organize all of your colors used in your app. Like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources>   <color name="red">#e60012</color>   <color name="blue">#33b5e5</color>   ... </resources> 

Is there something like this in iOS? If not, what is the best way to organize colors that are used throughout the app?

I would like to ultimately be able to replace things like [UIColor greenColor] with [MyColor greenColor].

Answer 1

Better later than never...

For Swift:

Create a new class: MyColors.swift that is an extension of UIColor class:

extension UIColor{      static func color1() -> UIColor{          return Utils.UIColorFromRGB(0x333333)     }      static func color2() -> UIColor{          return Utils.UIColorFromRGB(0xffffff)     } } 

Having in another class (maybe Utils.swift) this func:

class func UIColorFromRGB(rgbValue: UInt) -> UIColor {     return UIColor(         red: CGFloat((rgbValue & 0xFF0000) >> 16) / 255.0,         green: CGFloat((rgbValue & 0x00FF00) >> 8) / 255.0,         blue: CGFloat(rgbValue & 0x0000FF) / 255.0,         alpha: CGFloat(1.0)     ) } 

You can use it like this (note the brackets after UIColor):

tableView.backgroundColor = UIColor.color1() 

Edit: Changed the functions to static so that the colors can be used like the normal iOS colors without creating an instance of UIColor.

Answer 2

I have not come across a default file like this. You could create your own custom .plist file which holds the values and you load that when the app starts. Another option is to create a Category for UIColor which has a bunch of class methods returning the colors you want.

You could create something that looks like this:

UIColor+CustomColors.h:

@interface UIColor (CustomColors)      + (UIColor *)customColor1;     + (UIColor *)customColor2;     ...  @end 

UIColor+CustomColors.m:

#import "UIColor+CustomColors.h"  @implementation UIColor (CustomColors)      + (UIColor *)customColor1 {         return [UIColor colorWithRed:1.0f green:0.5f blue:0.5f alpha:1.0f];     }     + (UIColor *)customColor2 {         return [UIColor colorWithRed:1.0f green:0.5f blue:1.0f alpha:1.0f];     }     ...  @end 

Then where you set the background you could have something like this:

ViewController.m:

#import "UIColor+CustomColors.h"  ...  view.backgroundColor = [UIColor customColor1];