Swiftui list: trigger an action on tap and mimic basic select then auto-unselect - swiftui

Question

I'm starting to learn swiftui and I've run into a problem that is both very basic and easily solvable in UIKit; but after spending days searching the internet and watching WWDC videos I've found no native solution.
The premise is simple: I have an array of songs I want to display in a list; when a user taps on a song view it should highlight the view on press, unhighlight after release, and then play the song (ie trigger an action). Sounds simple right?
Here's what I tried and spent way too much time on:
Using List(selection) + .onEvent(changed): I end up with a UUID (because i've only gotten selection to work with a UUID) that I then have to check against an array of songs to match AND the cell won't unhighlight/select itself; even when I try to manually set the State variable to nil or another generated UUID.
Using .onTap (either on or in the cell): I have to tap on the text of the cell to trigger onTap so I get a lot of taps that just don't work (because I have lots of white space in the cell). I also don't get a nice UI color change on press/release.
So after spending hours trying many different things I've finally come up with a solution and I basically wanted to create an account and share it to hopefully help other developers in my position. Because this so very annoyed me that something so basic took so much effort and time to do.
In the end the best solution I came up with was this:
Using ZStack and an empty button:
edit: I found I need to include and hide the content otherwise the button doesn't grow to fill the space (seems in lists it does for some reason). Though not sure what the hit on performance is of rendering the content twice when hiding it. Maybe a GeometryReader would work better?
struct SelectionView: ViewModifier {
let onSelect: () -> Void
func body(content: Content) -> some View {
ZStack (alignment: .leading) {
Button {
onSelect()
} label: {
content
.hidden()
}
content
}
}
}
extension View {
func onSelection(_ selection: #escaping () -> Void) -> some View {
self.modifier(SelectionView(onSelect: selection))
}
}
then to use it:
SongCell(song: song)
.onSelection {
// Do whatever action you want
}
No messing around with list selection, no weird tap hit boxes, and get the press/release color change. Basically put an empty button in a ZStack and trigger off it's action. Could possibly cause tap/touch issues with more complicated cells (?) but it does exactly what I need it to do for my basic app. I'm just not sure why it took so much effort and why apple doesn't support such a basic use case by default? If I've overlooked something native please do inform me. Thanks.

Answer 1

I got the basic idea what you are trying to do. I'm Going to show simple example. Maybe using this you will be able to find proper solution.
First let's create a color : -
#State var colorToShow : Color = Color.blue
Now in body we have our ZStack or Your cell that we want to deal with : -
ZStack{
colorToShow
}.frame(width: 50, height: 50).padding()
.onLongPressGesture(minimumDuration: 3) {
print("Process Complete")
colorToShow = .green
} onPressingChanged: { pressing in
if pressing {
print("Pressing")
colorToShow = .red
} else {
print("Pressing Released")
colorToShow = .blue
}
}
Here we are using .onLongPressGesture. You can set minimum duration on which you want to perform action. Now on process completion You set what you want to do. OnPressingChange give you a bool value that changes according to user is pressing that button or not. Show color change(Highlight) or do action while bool value is true. When user release button do action or unhighlight since bool value turns false.
Hope you find it useful.