Create a copy of a UIView in Swift

Question

Because objects are reference types, not value types, if you set a UIView equal to another UIView, the views are the same object. If you modify one

Answer 1

This answer shows how to do what @uliwitness suggested. That is, get an identical object by archiving it and then unarchiving it. (It is also basically what Ivan Porkolab did in his answer, but in a more readable format, I think.)

let myView = UIView()

// create an NSData object from myView
let archive = NSKeyedArchiver.archivedData(withRootObject: myView)

// create a clone by unarchiving the NSData
let myViewCopy = NSKeyedUnarchiver.unarchiveObject(with: archive) as! UIView

Notes

• Unarchiving the data creates an object of type AnyObject. We used as! UIView to type cast it back to a UIView since we know that's what it is. If our view were a UITextView then we could type cast it as! UITextView.
• The myViewCopy no longer has a parent view.
• Some people mention some problems when working with UIImage. However, see this and this answer.

Updated to Swift 3.0