custom sub container views in UICollectionView not displayed in iOS UIAutomation logElementTree or Xcode UI Testing debugDescription

Question

The top level container view is a custom UICollectionView. I have added two custom container views on top up location. The hierarchy tree is like below

custom UICollectionView

|- custom UIView container => 1 ImageButton

|- custom UIView container => 8 Buttons

|- custom UICollectionCells

Voice Over could respond with these buttons correctly.

But when I tried to use UIAutomation with target.logElementTree(), the element tree only finds the UICollectioncell list under the cutom UICollectionView, It cannot find the custom subview container and their children.

Then I tried Xcode UI Testing, using app.debugDescription. The result still only contains UICollectionCells in the custom UICollectionView, without buttons.

How could I make them appear in the UIAutomation element tree?

Answer 1

Finally by using Aspects with the custom collection category:

In custom collection category, override +(void)load:

• add aspect block to init the stong property a, which storing all accessibilityElements after execution initWithFrame:collectionViewLayout: or initWithCoder:
• add aspect block to add subview to property a after execution addSubview:

finally, implement UIAccessibilityContainer protocol methods using the property a

Tricky part: use objc_setAssociatedObject and objc_getAssociatedObject to handle a