How to recognize continuous touch in Swift?

Question

How can I recognize continuous user touch in Swift code? By continuous I mean that the user has her finger on the screen. I would like to move a sprite kit node to the direction

Answer 1

Below is the code to drag the node around on X position (left and right), it is very easy to add Y position and do the same thing.

let item = SKSpriteNode(imageNamed: "xx")
var itemXposition = 50

override func touchesMoved(_ touches: Set, with event: UIEvent?) {
// updates itemXposition variable on every touch
    for touch in touches {
        let location = touch.location(in: self)
        itemXposition = Int(location.x)
    }
}

// this function is called for each frame render, updates the position on view
override func update(_ currentTime: TimeInterval) {
    spaceShip.position = CGPoint(x: self.itemXposition , y: 50 )
}