How to show MenuController of UICollectionViewCell?

Question

How could I reproduce the copy paste function of say, Messages on iPhone, where if you long press on a message, the message cell goes gray-ish and a little pop-up with "copy" shows up. How can I show that same menu on my UICollectionViewCells?

Answer 1

As it turns out he functionality is already built in and is as simple as implementing three collectionView: delegate methods. I created a protocol CopyableCell with a property called copyableProperty, the string that a cell wants to copy to the clipboard, that the cells that I can copy must follow. It was straightforward from then on:

  func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, shouldShowMenuForItemAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> Bool {
    if let _ = collectionView.cellForItemAtIndexPath(indexPath) as? CopyableCell {
      return true
    }
    return false
  }
  func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, canPerformAction action: Selector, forItemAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath, withSender sender: AnyObject?) -> Bool {
    if action.description == "copy:" {
      return true
    }

    return false
  }

  func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, performAction action: Selector, forItemAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath, withSender sender: AnyObject?) {
    //No more checking is needed here since we only allow for copying
    if let cell = collectionView.cellForItemAtIndexPath(indexPath) as? CopyableCell {
      UIPasteboard.generalPasteboard().string = cell.copyableProperty
    }
  }