Understanding the 10 Child View Restriction

In SwiftUI, every view can only house a maximum of 10 child views. This restriction can lead to issues, as illustrated by the error message shown in the following image:

As seen in the image, Xcode will raise an error when attempting to include more than 10 child views within a ScrollView.

Utilizing a Group can resolve this issue by restructuring the code as follows:

ScrollView {

Group {

Text("Hello World")

HStack {}

VStack {}

Section {}

ZStack {}

Image(systemName: "pencil")

Button(action: {}) {}

VStack {}

Form {}

List {}

}

Text("This is the 11th view")

}

The Group acts as an invisible layout container, meaning it does not alter the visual appearance of the user interface.

Reducing Code Redundancy

Any modifier applied to a Group will impact all of its child views, allowing for more concise and organized code. For demonstration, we will create a simple user interface resembling the design below:

First, we need to define the top-level container as a VStack with a blue background:

struct ContentView: View {

var body: some View {

VStack {}

.background(Color.blue)

} // body

} // ContentView

Next, we will insert the title within the VStack:

Text("SF Symbols List")

.font(.largeTitle)

.fontWeight(.bold)

.foregroundColor(Color.white)

Below this Text view, we will add another VStack to hold the SF Symbols images:

VStack(spacing: 30) {

Image(systemName: "pencil")

.font(.system(size: 50))

.foregroundColor(.white)

Image(systemName: "scribble")

.font(.system(size: 50))

.foregroundColor(.white)

Image(systemName: "lasso")

.font(.system(size: 50))

.foregroundColor(.white)

Image(systemName: "folder")

.font(.system(size: 50))

.foregroundColor(.white)

Image(systemName: "paperplane")

.font(.system(size: 50))

.foregroundColor(.white)

Image(systemName: "doc")

.font(.system(size: 50))

.foregroundColor(.white)

Image(systemName: "terminal")

.font(.system(size: 50))

.foregroundColor(.white)

}

.frame(minWidth: 0, maxWidth: .infinity, minHeight: 0, maxHeight: .infinity)

With spacing adjustments and frame settings, the UI should now look similar to the design depicted earlier.

Notably, all seven images share common font and foreground colors. To streamline the code, we can encompass all images within a Group and apply the modifiers at the Group level instead:

Group {

Image(systemName: "pencil")

Image(systemName: "scribble")

Image(systemName: "lasso")

Image(systemName: "folder")

Image(systemName: "paperplane")

Image(systemName: "doc")

Image(systemName: "terminal")

}

.font(.system(size: 50))

.foregroundColor(.white)

After this update, the code will look like this:

The output remains unchanged, but the code is more efficient.

Bonus Section: Code Refactoring

To enhance our code further, we can eliminate redundancies by creating an array in ContentView containing the list of SF Symbols:

let sfSymbolsList = ["pencil", "scribble", "lasso", "folder", "paperplane", "doc", "terminal"]

Next, we can utilize ForEach to avoid repeating the Image view:

ForEach(sfSymbolsList, id: .self) { index in

Image(systemName: index)

.font(.system(size: 50))

}

Finally, we can wrap everything in a Group and apply the foregroundColor modifier to change the text and image colors to white:

Group {

Text("SF Symbols")

.font(.largeTitle)

.fontWeight(.bold)

VStack(spacing: 30) {

ForEach(sfSymbolsList, id: .self) { index in

Image(systemName: index)

.font(.system(size: 50))

}

}

.frame(minWidth: 0, maxWidth: .infinity, minHeight: 0, maxHeight: .infinity)

}

.foregroundColor(Color.white)

In case you need clarification, here’s the screenshot of the updated code:

You can find the source code from Figure 6 on GitHub. Here’s the link.

Happy coding!

-Arc