Development Guide

Global IM UIKit is a globalized IM UI component library launched by RC, based on in-depth research on IM applications at home and abroad, and more in line with the usage habits of overseas users.

Global IM UIKit for iOS helps you quickly build fully functional chat features and pages, currently covering one-to-one chat and group chat conversation types (more conversation types will be supported in the future). The UI components support flexible configuration and customization, and can be developed using Objective-C and Swift.

Advantages

Global IM UIKit adopts "One-click Switch, Two-level Override, Three-level Customization" to expand customization capabilities.

• One-click Switch: For general, enumerable interaction and UI customization scopes, Global IM UIKit has already implemented relevant functions and adaptations internally. With just one line of code, you can switch between various interaction and UI styles.
• Two-level Override: Supports Module (page) and Component (component) overrides, including the inheritance and override of ViewModel, ViewController, and View. It is suitable for highly personalized customization of default implementations, with high extensibility.
• Three-level Customization: For general, non-enumerable customization scopes, it also provides API customization capabilities, such as navigation bar action items, input box extension function entries, etc.

Modularity

Module

Typically, an iOS page corresponds to a Module. A Module contains one or more Components and manages the overall layout of these Components. For example, the entire conversation page is a Module, and its content can be divided into three Components.

Component

A Component is the smallest unit in modular definitions and the smallest unit that developers can override.

As shown in the figure above, the top navigation bar is an independent Component, the bottom input component is an independent Component, and the middle scrolling area is also a Component.

In addition, Components also provide convenient customization APIs to support some general customization capabilities.

For example: adding navigation bar actions (you can choose whether to include them in the "More" pop-up layer); adding items to the input box "+" pop-up layer list; adding conversation operation items on the conversation list page (swipe left or right on the conversation Item), etc.

Module and Component Correspondence

Module	Component
RCChatListViewController	- RCChatListHeaderView - RCChatListView
RCChatViewController	- RCChatHeaderView - RCMessageListView - RCInputBar