want to create a search bar like google in swift

Question

I have an array like ["apple","appear","Azhar","code","BCom"] etc. This array contain more than half a million of records.

Now what I want to do, is to place a UISearchBar like in google and then whenever user types a text, then the dropdown list would appear with all the results containing this text and user could select one from the list.

For example - if the user types "a", then "apple","appear" and "Azhar" would appear in a drop-down list.

I don't want to use a UITableView or anything else to load the records. Whenever user types any word it should collect records from the array and make a drop down to display them.

How can I do this? Suggestions required please.

Answer 1

Pretty simple code that would do the trick, the search bar filter is easy, as for the drop down menu i use a third party Pod named 'DropDown' that is very easy to use : https://github.com/AssistoLab/DropDown

import UIKit
import DropDown

class ViewController: UIViewController, UISearchBarDelegate {

var data: [String] = ["apple","appear","Azhar","code","BCom"]
var dataFiltered: [String] = []
var dropButton = DropDown()

@IBOutlet weak var searchBar: UISearchBar!

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    dataFiltered = data

    dropButton.anchorView = searchBar
    dropButton.bottomOffset = CGPoint(x: 0, y:(dropButton.anchorView?.plainView.bounds.height)!)
    dropButton.backgroundColor = .white
    dropButton.direction = .bottom

    dropButton.selectionAction = { [unowned self] (index: Int, item: String) in
        print("Selected item: \(item) at index: \(index)") //Selected item: code at index: 0
    }
}

func searchBar(_ searchBar: UISearchBar, textDidChange searchText: String) {
    dataFiltered = searchText.isEmpty ? data : data.filter({ (dat) -> Bool in
        dat.range(of: searchText, options: .caseInsensitive) != nil
    })

    dropButton.dataSource = dataFiltered
    dropButton.show()
}

func searchBarTextDidBeginEditing(_ searchBar: UISearchBar) {
    searchBar.setShowsCancelButton(true, animated: true)
    for ob: UIView in ((searchBar.subviews[0] )).subviews {
        if let z = ob as? UIButton {
            let btn: UIButton = z
            btn.setTitleColor(UIColor.white, for: .normal)
        }
    }
}

func searchBarTextDidEndEditing(_ searchBar: UISearchBar) {
    searchBar.showsCancelButton = false
}

func searchBarCancelButtonClicked(_ searchBar: UISearchBar) {
    searchBar.resignFirstResponder()
    searchBar.text = ""
    dataFiltered = data
    dropButton.hide()
}
}