How to build Tap-And-Fade using SwiftUI instead of a hard deselect. The default in SwiftUI is too hard and doesn't feel right.

TapAndFadeExample.swift

// Helper to hold the parent VC weakly
class WeakViewControllerHolder: ObservableObject {
    weak var vc: UIViewController?

    init(_ vc: UIViewController) {
        self.vc = vc
    }
}

@available(iOS 13.0, *)
struct FadableButton: View {
    @EnvironmentObject var sender: WeakViewControllerHolder
    let title: String
    let action: () -> Void

    init(_ title: String, action: @escaping () -> Void) {
        self.title = title
        self.action = action
    }

    var body: some View {
        Button(title) {
            sender.vc?.deselectSelectedRow()
            action()
        }
    }
}

// The settings view where we want the nice fade
struct SettingsView: View {
    @EnvironmentObject var sender: WeakViewControllerHolder
    
    // later in your List/Form. Could also be wrapped!
    FadableButton("Some Action") {
        // do your action
    }
}

// Settings is embedded in a regular view controller and created like this:
func makeSettingsView() -> UIHostingController<AnyView> {
    UIHostingController(rootView: SettingsView().environmentObject(WeakViewControllerHolder(self)).eraseToAnyView())
}

extension UIViewController {
    /// Helper to deselect the selected cell row.
    func deselectSelectedRow(animated: Bool = true) {
        // This helper is used for UITableViewController subclasses but also generic UIViewController or SwiftUI holding ones, so we search.
        guard let tableView = view.closestSubview(of: UITableView.self),
              let selectedIndex = tableView.indexPathForSelectedRow else { return }

        tableView.deselectRow(at: selectedIndex, animated: animated)
    }
}

Questions:

• Is my approach to wrapping Button legit? Is there an easier/better way?
• Any other chance to get the responder chain in a SwiftUI action to crawl up without having to pass WeakViewControllerHolder as environment object? The current approach also has the downside that it only works when wrapped in a view controller.
• Anything else I can improve?

Tweet/Video: https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1353296114808737792?s=21

Apple seems to like parent-child controller hierarchies. In my SwiftUI wrapper, I used a UIHostingController to spy on child controllers that are added to the hosting controller. You can use that to discover the parent table view controller.

https://github.com/LeoNatan/LNPopupUI/blob/1232830c00bd63c98763c3070c7367bd44bcb9b3/Sources/LNPopupUI/Private/LNPopupProxyViewController.swift#L206

Since you have other issues with the table view, it’s probably a good idea to wrap that one, take over it’s delegate with a proxy object (or ISA swizzle the original 🤪) and enhance the returned values and actions.

Folks commenting that making a Button subclass is not SwiftUI-y: I tried Configuration and ViewModifiers with gesture recognizers, but it's all cursed, fires too late and/or delays the action call on button. Hours wasted: +=2