A collection view layout that gives you control over the horizontal and vertical alignment of the cells. You can use it to align the cells like words in a left- or right-aligned text and you can specify how the cells are vertically aligned within their rows.

Other than that, the layout behaves exactly like Apple's UICollectionViewFlowLayout. (It's a subclass.)

• horizontalAlignment = .left

• horizontalAlignment = .right

• horizontalAlignment = .justified

• verticalAlignment = .top
• verticalAlignment = .center
• verticalAlignment = .bottom

(🚧 Sample images to be added...)

AlignedCollectionViewFlowLayout is available through CocoaPods. To install it, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod "AlignedCollectionViewFlowLayout"

Just add the file AlignedCollectionViewFlowLayout.swift to your Xcode project and you're ready to go.

To run the example project, clone the repo, and run pod install from the Example directory first.

1. You have a collection view in Interface Builder and setup its data source appropriately. Run the app and make sure everything works as expected (except the cell alignment).

2. In the Document Outline, select the collection view layout object.

   

3. In the Identity Inspector, set the layout object's custom class to AlignedCollectionViewFlowLayout.

   

4. Add and customize the following code to your view controller's viewDidLoad() method:

    let alignedFlowLayout = collectionView?.collectionViewLayout as? AlignedCollectionViewFlowLayout
    alignedFlowLayout?.horizontalAlignment = .left
    alignedFlowLayout?.verticalAlignment = .top
   

   If you omit any of the last two lines the default alignment will be used (horizontally justified, vertically centered).

1. Create a new AlignedCollectionViewFlowLayout object and specify the alignment you want:

    let alignedFlowLayout = AlignedCollectionViewFlowLayout(horizontalAlignment: .left, verticalAlignment: .top)
   

2. Either create a new collection view object and and initialize it with alignedFlowLayout:

    let collectionView = UICollectionView(frame: bounds, collectionViewLayout: alignedFlowLayout)
   

   or assign alignedFlowLayout to the collectionViewLayout property of an existing collection view:

    yourExistingCollectionView.collectionViewLayout = alignedFlowLayout
   

3. Implement your collection view's data source.

4. Run the app.

For the left and right alignment AlignedCollectionViewFlowLayout distributes the cells horizontally with a constant spacing which is the same for all rows. You can control the spacing with the minimumInteritemSpacing property.

alignedFlowLayout.minimumInteritemSpacing = 10

Despite its name (which originates from its superclass UICollectionViewFlowLayout) this property doesn't describe a minimum spacing but the exact spacing between the cells.

The vertical spacing between the lines works exactly as in UICollectionViewFlowLayout:

alignedFlowLayout.minimumLineSpacing = 10

Mischa Hildebrand, web@mischa-hildebrand.de

AlignedCollectionViewFlowLayout is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.