A generic cell provider implementation in Swift

ReusableView.swift

//
//  ReusableView.swift
//  Pods
//
//  Created by Shahpour Benkau on 27/02/2017.
//
//

import UIKit

/**
 *  Represents a general 'cell' type to provide conformance for UITableViewCell and UICollectionViewCell
 */
public protocol ReusableCell: class {
    static var reuseIdentifier: String { get }
}

extension ReusableCell {
    public static var reuseIdentifier: String {
        return String(describing: self)
    }
}

extension UITableViewCell: ReusableCell { }
extension UICollectionViewCell: ReusableCell { }

/**
 *  Represents a general 'view' type to provide conformance for UITableView and UICollectionView. Includes register and dequeue calls so that we can handle both types, or even your own DataView types
 */
public protocol ReusableCellHosting {
    func register<C: ReusableCell>(cellClass: C.Type)
    func dequeueReusableCell<C: ReusableCell>(ofType cellClass: C.Type, for indexPath: IndexPath) -> C
    func dequeueReusableCell<C: ReusableCell>(with identifier: String, for indexPath: IndexPath) -> C
}

extension UITableView: ReusableCellHosting {
    
    public func register<C: ReusableCell>(cellClass: C.Type) {
        register(cellClass, forCellReuseIdentifier: cellClass.reuseIdentifier)
    }
    
    public func dequeueReusableCell<C: ReusableCell>(ofType cellClass: C.Type, for indexPath: IndexPath) -> C {
        return dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: cellClass.reuseIdentifier, for: indexPath) as! C
    }
    
    public func dequeueReusableCell<C : ReusableCell>(with identifier: String, for indexPath: IndexPath) -> C {
        return dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: identifier, for: indexPath) as! C
    }
    
}

extension UICollectionView {
    
    public func register<C: ReusableCell>(cellClass: C.Type) {
        self.register(cellClass, forCellWithReuseIdentifier: cellClass.reuseIdentifier)
    }
    
    public func dequeueReusableCell<C: ReusableCell>(ofType cellClass: C.Type, for indexPath: IndexPath) -> C {
        return dequeueReusableCell(withReuseIdentifier: cellClass.reuseIdentifier, for: indexPath) as! C
    }
    
}

Sample.swift

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    tableView.register(cellClass: PersonCell.self)
}

override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
    if person.role == "Engineer" {
        let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(ofType: PersonCell.self, for: indexPath)
        cell.textLabel?.text = person.name
        cell.detailTextLabel?.text = person.role
        return cell
    } else {
        let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(with: "SubtitleCell", for: indexPath) as UITableViewCell
        cell.textLabel?.text = person.name
        cell.detailTextLabel?.text = person.role
        return cell
    }
}

Using something really similar, the only difference being that the methods signatures are a bit less wordy and implemented slightly different:

// I find the first two are obvious we're dequeueing a cell by the types' names, usually.
tableView.register(PersonCell.self)
tableView.dequeue(PersonCell.self, for: indexPath)
// Not gaining much here but it sounds better than the original.
tableView.dequeueCell(withIdentifier: "SubtitleCell", for: indexPath)

Really love using it! And the same goes for UICollectionViewCells.

I'll consider it -- nice suggestions ;)

My implementation also handles UICollectionView and any other Cell-based views you may import via 3rd party frameworks. Which is one of the main differences in approach.