Evenly space multiple views within a container view

Question

Auto Layout is making my life difficult. In theory, it was going to be really useful when I switched, but I seem to fight it all of the time.

I\'ve made a demo proje

Answer 1

Check out the open source library PureLayout. It offers a few API methods for distributing views, including variants where the spacing between each view is fixed (view size varies as needed), and where the size of each view is fixed (spacing between views varies as needed). Note that all of these are accomplished without the use of any "spacer views".

From NSArray+PureLayout.h:

// NSArray+PureLayout.h

// ...

/** Distributes the views in this array equally along the selected axis in their superview. Views will be the same size (variable) in the dimension along the axis and will have spacing (fixed) between them. */
- (NSArray *)autoDistributeViewsAlongAxis:(ALAxis)axis
                                alignedTo:(ALAttribute)alignment
                         withFixedSpacing:(CGFloat)spacing;

/** Distributes the views in this array equally along the selected axis in their superview. Views will be the same size (fixed) in the dimension along the axis and will have spacing (variable) between them. */
- (NSArray *)autoDistributeViewsAlongAxis:(ALAxis)axis
                                alignedTo:(ALAttribute)alignment
                            withFixedSize:(CGFloat)size;

// ...

Since it's all open source, if you're interested to see how this is achieved without spacer views just take a look at the implementation. (It depends on leveraging both the constant and multiplier for the constraints.)