Symbolic
Symbolic is a type-safe wrapper on top of SF Symbols font added by Apple in iOS 13.
It replaces a stringly typed API into a compile-time checked one, turniong: UIImage(systemName: "a.circle.fill") into UIImage(symbol: Symbolic.Letter.a.rounded.filled).
Symbolic works on all supported platforms (iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS) and exposes all of the 1,584 available glyphs grouping them into 3 logical namespaces: Letters, Numbers and Symbols with helper methods for both UIKit and SwiftUI.
Installation
Symbolic is meant to be used with the new Swift Package Manager added in Xcode 11, for more details please see the Adopting Swift Packages in Xcode session from WWDC 2019.
Image Loading
image = UIImage(symbol: Symbolic.Numbers._0) // Basic Symbol
image = UIImage(symbol: Symbolic.Symbols.questionmark.circled) // Circled version of the question mark glyph
image = UIImage(symbol: Symbolic.Symbols.questionmark.video.filled.reversed) // Circled & RTL version of the question mark inside of a camera glyph
image = UIImage(squareSymbol: Symbolic.Letters.f) // Convinience initializer that will automatically select the squared version of the glyph
image = UIImage(filledSymbol: Symbolic.Symbols.sun.haze) // Convinience initializer that will automatically select the filled version of the glyphSymbol Protocols
Apart from just adding a typesafe method to access SF Symbol glyphs, Symbolic also exposes several protocols that can be used to constrain the type of symbols your custom views can contain to a specific subset, such as:
FilledSymbolReversedSymbolSquaredSymbolRoundedSymbol
An example use-case can be seen below:
class CircularButtonCell: UITableViewCell {
typealias CellSymbol = RoundedSymbol & FilledSymbol
var myImage: CellSymbol = Symbolic.Letters.a.rounded.filled {
didSet {
self.imageView?.image = UIImage(symbol: self.myImage)
}
}
func setup(image: CellSymbol) {
self.myImage = image
}
}
class ViewController: UIViewController {
func createCell() {
let cell = CircularButtonCell()
// This cell requires the image to be filled & circular
cell.setup(image: Symbolic.Letters.a.rounded.filled)
// Oh no! This line won't compile!
cell.setup(image: Symbolic.Letters.a.squared.filled)
}
}Auto-Generated Code
Symbolic consists of two targets: the main framework exposing all the glyphs and a Generator executable target that generates all of the concrete types based on data from sfsymbols.com repository.