How to gain access to the UIView of a UIViewRepresentable

Question

Created Apr ’24

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Participants 1

What would be an idiomatic means of causing a WKWebView to be reloaded via a method of a UIViewRepresentable struct?

Here's my struct:

struct WebView: UIViewRepresentable {
    var url: URL

    func makeUIView(context: Context) -> WKWebView {
        let webView = WKWebView()
        let request = URLRequest(url: url)
        webView.load(request)
        return webView
    }
    
    func reload() {
        // I'd like to get hold of the webView UIView here and call its `reload()`.
    }
    
    func updateUIView(_ webView: WKWebView, context: Context) {
    }
}

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Answer 1

huntc OP

Apr ’24

My solution to this was to instantiate the underlying web view on instantiation of the struct - not as part of the makeUIView method, although it is still returned by that. I'm unsure how this may contravene any view lifecycle rules. Here's the code anyhow:

struct WebView: UIViewRepresentable {
    let url: URL

    let webView = WKWebView()

    func makeUIView(context: Context) -> WKWebView {
        let request = URLRequest(url: url)
        webView.load(request)
        return webView
    }
    
    func reload() {
        webView.reload()
    }
    
    func updateUIView(_ webView: WKWebView, context: Context) {
    }
}

1