Using SwiftUI Views for UICollectionViewCell inside a UIViewRepresentable CollectionView (Wrapped UICollectionView) - uicollectionview

Question

I have to replace an existing SwiftUI List of views with a UICollectionView(because the app designs were updated and the new designs are pretty complex for SwiftUI so it that had to be implemented as a custom UICollectionViewFlowLayout)
So the views(which now will be (or a part of)UICollectionViewCell) are already implemented in SwiftUI, and i didn't want to re-write them in Swift. The view are complex in terms of writing down the Layout Code, which apparently was pretty easy using SwiftUI.
I could find some help wrapping up a collection view like this one but little on how to host an existing swift ui view inside a UICollectionViewCell
Any help/suggestions/links would be appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

I did get that working. But not sure if that's the correct solution. If anyone has a better solution please add your answer.
So i created a UICollectionViewCell sub-class.
final class HostingCollectionViewCell: UICollectionViewCell {
func host<Content: View>(_ hostingController: UIHostingController<Content>) {
backgroundColor = .clear
hostingController.view.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
hostingController.view.backgroundColor = .clear
addSubview(hostingController.view)
let constraints = [
hostingController.view.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: contentView.topAnchor, constant: 0),
hostingController.view.leftAnchor.constraint(equalTo: contentView.leftAnchor, constant: 0),
hostingController.view.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: contentView.bottomAnchor, constant: 0),
hostingController.view.rightAnchor.constraint(equalTo: contentView.rightAnchor, constant: 0),
]
NSLayoutConstraint.activate(constraints)
}
}
And used it like..
func makeUIView(context: Context) -> UICollectionView {
let collectionView = UICollectionView(
frame: .zero,
collectionViewLayout: MyCustomCollectionViewLayout()
)
collectionView.register(HostingCollectionViewCell.self, forCellWithReuseIdentifier: "HostingCell")
let dataSource = UICollectionViewDiffableDataSource<Section, Member>(collectionView: collectionView) { collectionView, indexPath, member in
let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCell(withReuseIdentifier: "HostingCell", for: indexPath) as? HostingCollectionViewCell
for subview in cell?.contentView.subviews ?? [] {
subview.removeFromSuperview()
}
let swiftUIView = SomeSwiftUIView()
.onTapGesture {
// Equivalent of didTapItemAt...
}
cell?.host(UIHostingController(rootView: firefighterView))
return cell
}
context.coordinator.dataSource = dataSource
collectionView.clipsToBounds = false
collectionView.backgroundColor = .clear
collectionView.showsVerticalScrollIndicator = false
// Populated Datasource
return collectionView
}
This makeUIView is part of the struct SwiftUICollectionView: UIViewRepresentable view.