#SlackTextViewController

A drop-in UIViewController subclass with a growing text input view and other useful messaging features. Meant to be a replacement for UITableViewController & UICollectionViewController.

This library is used in Slack's iOS app. It was built to fit our needs, but is flexible enough to be reused by others wanting to build great messaging apps for iOS.

• Works out of the box with UITableView or UICollectionView or UIScrollView
• Growing Text View, with line count limit support
• Flexible UI built with Auto Layout
• Customizable: provides left and right button, and toolbar outlets
• Tap Gesture for dismissing the keyboard
• External keyboard commands support
• Undo/Redo (with keyboard commands and UIMenuController)
• Text Appending APIs

• Autocomplete Mode by registering any prefix key (@, #, /)
• Edit Mode
• Typing Indicator display
• Shake Gesture for clearing text view
• Multimedia Pasting (png, gif, mov, etc.)
• Inverted Mode for displaying cells upside-down (using CATransform) -- a necessary hack for some messaging apps. YES by default, so beware, your entire cells might be flipped!
• Tap Gesture for dismissing the keyboard
• Panning Gesture for sliding down/up the keyboard
• Hiddable TextInputbar
• Dynamic Type for adjusting automatically the text input bar height based on the font size.
• Bouncy Animations

• Carthage & Cocoapods
• Swift: [A sample project is available in a different branch] (https://github.com/slackhq/SlackTextViewController/tree/swift-example)
• iOS 7, 8 & 9
• iPhone & iPad
• Storyboard
• UIPopOverController & UITabBarController
• Container View Controller
• Auto-Rotation
• iPad Multitasking (iOS 9 only)
• Localization

pod 'SlackTextViewController'

github "slackhq/SlackTextViewController"

There are two ways to do this:

• Copy and drag the Source/ folder to your project.
• or compile the project located in Builder/SlackTextViewController.xcodeproj to create a SlackTextViewController.framework package. You could also link the library into your project.

##How to use

###Subclassing SLKTextViewController is meant to be subclassed, like you would normally do with UITableViewController or UICollectionViewController or UIScrollView. This pattern is a convenient way of extending UIViewController. SlackTextViewController manages a lot behind the scenes while still providing the ability to add custom behaviours. You may override methods, and decide to call super and perform additional logic, or not to call super and override default logic.

Start by creating a new subclass of SLKTextViewController.

In the init overriding method, if you wish to use the UITableView version, call:

[super initWithTableViewStyle:UITableViewStylePlain]

or the UICollectionView version:

[super initWithCollectionViewLayout:[UICollectionViewFlowLayout new]]

or the UIScrollView version:

[super initWithScrollView:self.myStrongScrollView]

Protocols like UITableViewDelegate and UITableViewDataSource are already setup for you. You will be able to call whatever delegate and data source methods you need for customising your control.

Calling [super init] will call [super initWithTableViewStyle:UITableViewStylePlain] by default.

###Growing Text View

The text view expands automatically when a new line is required, until it reaches its maxNumberOfLinesvalue. You may change this property's value in the textView.

By default, the number of lines is set to best fit each device dimensions:

• iPhone 4 (<=480pts): 4 lines
• iPhone 5/6 (>=568pts): 6 lines
• iPad (>=768pts): 8 lines

On iPhone devices, in landscape orientation, the maximum number of lines is changed to fit the available space.

###Inverted Mode

Some layouts may require to show from bottom to top and new subviews are inserted from the bottom. To enable this, you must use the inverted flag property (default is YES). This will actually invert the entire ScrollView object. Make sure to apply the same transformation to every subview. In the case of UITableView, the best place for adjusting the transformation is in its data source methods like:

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    UITableViewCell *cell = [self.tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:chatCellIdentifier];
    cell.transform = self.tableView.transform;
}

###Autocompletion

We use autocompletion for many things: names, channels, emoji, and more.

To set up autocompletion in your app, follow these simple steps:

You must first register all the prefixes you'd like to support for autocompletion detection:

[self registerPrefixesForAutoCompletion:@[@"#"]];

Every time a new character is inserted in the text view, the nearest word to the caret will be processed and verified if it contains any of the registered prefixes.

Once the prefix has been detected, -didChangeAutoCompletionPrefix:andWord: will be called. This is the perfect place to populate your data source and show/hide the autocompletion view. So you must override it in your subclass, to be able to perform additional tasks. Default returns NO.