How do you determine spacing between cells in UICollectionView flowLayout

Question

I have a UICollectionView with a flow layout and each cell is a square. How do I determine the spacing between each cells on each row? I can\'t seem to find the appropriate

Answer 1

To get a maximum interitem spacing, subclass UICollectionViewFlowLayout and override layoutAttributesForElementsInRect: and layoutAttributesForItemAtIndexPath:.

For example, a common problem is this: the rows of a collection view are right-and-left justified, except for the last line which is left-justified. Let's say we want all the lines to be left-justified, so that the space between them is, let's say, 10 points. Here's an easy way (in your UICollectionViewFlowLayout subclass):

- (NSArray *)layoutAttributesForElementsInRect:(CGRect)rect {
    NSArray* arr = [super layoutAttributesForElementsInRect:rect];
    for (UICollectionViewLayoutAttributes* atts in arr) {
        if (nil == atts.representedElementKind) {
            NSIndexPath* ip = atts.indexPath;
            atts.frame = [self layoutAttributesForItemAtIndexPath:ip].frame;
        }
    }
    return arr;
}

- (UICollectionViewLayoutAttributes *)layoutAttributesForItemAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    UICollectionViewLayoutAttributes* atts =
    [super layoutAttributesForItemAtIndexPath:indexPath];

    if (indexPath.item == 0) // degenerate case 1, first item of section
        return atts;

    NSIndexPath* ipPrev =
    [NSIndexPath indexPathForItem:indexPath.item-1 inSection:indexPath.section];

    CGRect fPrev = [self layoutAttributesForItemAtIndexPath:ipPrev].frame;
    CGFloat rightPrev = fPrev.origin.x + fPrev.size.width + 10;
    if (atts.frame.origin.x <= rightPrev) // degenerate case 2, first item of line
        return atts;

    CGRect f = atts.frame;
    f.origin.x = rightPrev;
    atts.frame = f;
    return atts;
}

The reason this is so easy is that we aren't really performing the heavy lifting of the layout; we are leveraging the layout work that UICollectionViewFlowLayout has already done for us. It has already decided how many items go in each line; we're just reading those lines and shoving the items together, if you see what I mean.