UICollectionView: compositional layout disables prefetching?

Question

I have a very simple UICollectionView that uses compositional layout to easily achieve dynamic cell heights. Unfortunately doing that seems to disable content prefetching using UICollectionViewDataSourcePrefetching. In the following sample code, the collectionView(_:prefetchItemsAt:) method is called only once, upon initial display of the collection view. No scrolling action leads to further calls to the method.

What can I do to get prefetching working?

class ViewController: UIViewController, 
    UICollectionViewDataSource,
    UICollectionViewDelegate,
    UICollectionViewDataSourcePrefetching
{
    @IBOutlet var collectionView: UICollectionView!

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        collectionView.collectionViewLayout = createLayout()
        collectionView.dataSource = self
        collectionView.delegate = self
        collectionView.prefetchDataSource = self
        collectionView.register(MyCell.self, forCellWithReuseIdentifier: "cell")
    }

    func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, numberOfItemsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
        return 100
    }

    func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
        let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCell(withReuseIdentifier: "cell", for: indexPath) as! MyCell
        cell.label.text = String(repeating: "\(indexPath) ", count: indexPath.item)

        return cell
    }

    // this is only called once. Why?
    func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, prefetchItemsAt indexPaths: [IndexPath]) {
        print("prefetch for \(indexPaths)")
    }

    private func createLayout() -> UICollectionViewLayout {
        let layout = UICollectionViewCompositionalLayout { (_, _) -> NSCollectionLayoutSection? in

            let size = NSCollectionLayoutSize(widthDimension: .fractionalWidth(1.0),
                                              heightDimension: .estimated(44))
            let item = NSCollectionLayoutItem(layoutSize: size)

            let group = NSCollectionLayoutGroup.horizontal(layoutSize: size, subitem: item, count: 1)
            group.interItemSpacing = .fixed(16)

            let section = NSCollectionLayoutSection(group: group)
            section.contentInsets = NSDirectionalEdgeInsets(top: 0, leading: 16, bottom: 0, trailing: 16)
            section.interGroupSpacing = 8

            return section
        }

        return layout
    }
}

class MyCell: UICollectionViewCell {
    let label = UILabel()

    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame: frame)

        label.numberOfLines = 0
        label.lineBreakMode = .byWordWrapping
        backgroundColor = .orange
        contentView.addSubview(label)

        label.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        label.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: contentView.topAnchor).isActive = true
        label.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: contentView.leadingAnchor).isActive = true
        label.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: contentView.trailingAnchor).isActive = true
        label.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: contentView.bottomAnchor).isActive = true
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }

}

(Using Xcode 11.5 / iOS 13.5. The collectionView outlet is connected to a full-screen instance in a storyboard)

EDIT: Further testing shows that heightDimension: .estimated(44) seems to be the cause. Replacing this with .absolute(44) makes prefetching work again, but that of course defeats the purpose of having such a layout with multi-line text. Seems like a bug, and I've filed FB7849272 if anyone would like to dupe it.

EDIT/2: For the time being, I can avoid this situation by using a plain old flow layout and calculate each individual cell height, this also makes prefetching work again. Nevertheless, I'm curious if there isn't a workaround while still using compositional layouts, so I added a bounty.

Answer 1

I've just received feedback from Apple asking me to re-test this issue in Xcode 13.1, and lo and behold, the bug has indeed been fixed.