Swift and storyboards

So far in this chapter, the storyboard content does not involve any Swift or other programming content—it used the drag and drop capabilities of the storyboard editor. Fortunately, it is easy to integrate Storyboard and Swift using a custom view controller.

Custom view controllers

Each standard view controller has a corresponding superclass (listed in the Scenes and view controllers section previously in this chapter). This can be replaced with a custom subclass, which then has the ability to influence and change what happens in the user interface. To replace the message in the Message Scene, create a new file named MessageViewCotroller.swift with the following content:

import UIKit
class MessageViewController: UIViewController {
}

Having created the class, it can be associated with the view controller by selecting it in the storyboard and then switching to the identity inspector by navigating to View | Utilities | Show Identity Inspector or pressing Command + Option...