mdabbagh88 / viewintrospector

Visual Debugging Tool for the iOS Simulator. A view hierarchy viewer desktop app for CBIntrospect.

View Introspector

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CBIntrospector iOS lib

View Introspector is a desktop app for the iOS Simulator that aid in debugging user interfaces built with UIKit. It's especially useful for UI layouts that are dynamically created or can change during runtime.

CBIntrospector iOS lib

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It uses keyboard shortcuts to handle starting, ending and other commands. It can also be invoked via an app-wide UIGestureRecognizer if it is to be used on the device.

Features:

• Simple to setup and use
• See the entire hierarchy (view tree) of the window
• Send messages (call any method) to the selected view during runtime
• Displays a views origin & size, including distances to edges of main window
• Displays properties of a view, including subclass properties, actions and targets (see below for an example)
• Displays accessibility properties — useful for UI automation scripts
• Move and resize view frames during runtime
• Highlighting of view frames

CBIntrospector Demo App

View Introspector Usage

• Download desktop app - View Introspector
• Start your app
• Start View Introspector desktop app
• Install CBIntrospector iOS lib
• Start debugging target iOS project
• In the iOS simulator, press space key to activate the introspect tool
• Back in the View Introspector, click Reload to load the projects
• Select the project to open from View Introspector project window (Menu->Window->Show Projects)
• Interact with View Introspector UIView tree to select or adjust the UIView in the iOS Simulator
• (More documentation coming soon)

Before you start, make sure the DEBUG environment variable is set. CBIntrospect will not run without that set to prevent it being left in for production use.

Provide custom name of view:

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];

    // provide custom names for use by the View Introspector desktop app and console output
	[[CBIntrospect sharedIntrospector] setName:@"myActivityIndicator" forObject:self.activityIndicator accessedWithSelf:YES];
    [[CBIntrospect sharedIntrospector] setNameForViewController:self];
}

License

Made available under the GPL v3 license.