Collection view not displaying Cells

You don't show enough code. Could you show the code where you define the delegate and data source functions for the collectionView ?

How is the cell defined ? Directly in the collectionView or with a specific nib ?

Look at your code, I bet you will come in a few minutes after discovering a major flaw, as usual.

When you reloadData in your code?

I believe this is the code that you said I didn't show? ExploreView Controller:

//  ExploreViewController.swift
//  EatOut
//
//  Created by Tony Hudson on 16/05/2021.
//

import UIKit

class ExploreViewController: UIViewController, UICollectionViewDataSource, UICollectionViewDelegate {

    func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, viewForSupplementaryElementOfKind kind: String, at indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionReusableView  {
        let headerView = collectionView.dequeueReusableSupplementaryView(ofKind: kind, withReuseIdentifier: "header", for: indexPath)
        return headerView
    }

    func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, numberOfItemsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
        return manager.numberOfItems()
    }

    func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
        let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCell(withReuseIdentifier: "exploreCell", for: indexPath) as! ExploreCell
        let item = manager.explore(at: indexPath)
        cell.lblName.text = item.name
        cell.imgExplore.image = UIImage(named: item.image)
        return cell
    }
    
    @IBOutlet weak var collectionView: UICollectionView!
    let manager = ExploreDataManager()

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        let manager = ExploreDataManager()
        manager.fetch()

        // Do any additional setup after loading the view.
    }

    @IBAction func unwindLocationCancel(segue: UIStoryboardSegue) {
    }
} 

```

One observation: the last IBAction, doesn't appear to be connected (no dot in the circle).

As far as I know the cell is defined in the ExploreCell.swift shown in. first post. 
The author is trying to teach the readers MVC so the model files are:
ExploreItem.swift
ExploreDataManager.swift
The View item is ExploreCell.swift
Unfortunately, as far as I can see the code is correct against the author version I downloaded from the book.
If its not a typo the only other thing is that I have missed one of the steps.
If you can help I would be grateful!
 

Hi OOPer The plist file is definitely added to the project, as I had to Create a new group called Model and then a new file which was the ExploreDat.plist. It is definitely in the Project Navigator. I tried to add a file using the paperclip icon below but when I go the the folder where it is stored, it is gray'd out. That would not prove much as it is a collection of 31 items with 2 fields (name & Image).

As part of the instructions in the book, in the ExploreDataManager.swift i test that the data works by changing the line:

items.append(ExploreItem(dict: data))

With:

print(data)

It should print the data in the debug area, but it does not? What could cause this to happen? Is this what meant when you said have I checked loadData()?

As a check I have tried to simulate the error in Playground. This was also suggested in the book. Swear that when I first tried it some time ago it worked! The Playground produces the table in LiveView but is empty. Here is the code:

import UIKit
import PlaygroundSupport

class TableViewExampleController: UIViewController, UITableViewDataSource {
    var tableView: UITableView?
    var names: [String] = ["Jane", "Akhil", "Divij"]
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        self.view.bounds = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 375, height: 667)
        createTableView()
}

    func createTableView() {
        self.tableView = UITableView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width:
         self.view.frame.width, height: self.view.frame.height))
        self.tableView?.dataSource = self
        self.tableView?.backgroundColor = .white
        self.tableView?.register(UITableViewCell.self, forCellReuseIdentifier: "Cell")
        self.view.addSubview(self.tableView!)
}

    func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
        names.count
}

    func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
        let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "Cell", for: indexPath)
        let name = names[indexPath.row]
        cell.textLabel?.text? = name
        return cell
    }

}

PlaygroundPage.current.liveView = TableViewExampleController()

It seems strange that both the main project and Playground suffer from the same problem? Is there anything in the setup or preferences that would cause this? I don't want to reinstall Xcode as it would mean I would have to start from the beginning again. Can anyone suggest why this behaviour is occurring?

Replace

        cell.textLabel?.text? = name

by

        cell.textLabel!.text = name

And it works.

You can test for safety:

if cell.textLabel != nil {
        cell.textLabel!.text = name
}

Right! The Playground code now works and in the ExploreDataManager.swift with the print(data) statement it prints the data in the debug area. On checking my code with the code I downloaded I found that the instructions were ambigious and I had put a statement in the wrong place in the ExploreViewController.swift file. Viz. let Manager = ExploreDataManager() should have been after The first @IBOutlet statement. But alas I still get the explore screen without the image and title when I run the app. I don't know if this is relevant, when the app is run I get a warning Here is the screen shot:

Could this be the reason that the images and text are not being loaded?