Creating a Custom Sidebar in SwiftUI: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating a New SwiftUI Project

To get started, create a new SwiftUI project from scratch. Open Xcode and click on “Create a new Xcode project.” Choose the “iOS” template and select “App” under the “Application” section. Click “Next” and enter your project name, language, and framework. For this tutorial, we’ll use Swift and SwiftUI.

Designing the Home Screen in Swift

The app we’re designing consists of a home screen and a sidebar on the same screen. The home screen will have a list of images loaded through the network using AsyncImage. Add the following code to ContentView.swift:

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        NavigationView {
            List {
                ForEach(0..<8) { index in
                    AsyncImage(url: URL(string: "undefined.com/image\(index).jpg")) { image in
                        image.resizable()
                    } placeholder: {
                        ProgressView()
                    }
                }
            }
           .listStyle(.inset)
           .navigationTitle("Home")
           .navigationBarTitleDisplayMode(.inline)
        }
    }
}

Creating the Custom Sidebar View in Swift

To create the sidebar view, add a new SwiftUI file called Sidebar.swift. In this file, add the following code:

import SwiftUI

struct Sidebar: View {
    @Binding var isSidebarVisible: Bool

    var body: some View {
        ZStack {
            Color.black.opacity(0.6)
               .edgesIgnoringSafeArea(.all)

            VStack {
                // Sidebar content goes here
            }
        }
       .frame(width: 250)
       .offset(x: isSidebarVisible? 0 : -250)
       .animation(.easeInOut, value: isSidebarVisible)
    }
}

Adding Content to the Swift Sidebar

The final step is to add content to the sidebar. In our sidebar, there will be a user profile with navigation links to different sections of the app. Add the following code to Sidebar.swift:

VStack {
    UserProfile()

    MenuLinks(items: [
        MenuItem(icon: "house", text: "Home"),
        MenuItem(icon: "person", text: "Profile"),
        MenuItem(icon: "gear", text: "Settings")
    ])
}

You now have a working sidebar in SwiftUI. You can customize the appearance and behavior of the sidebar by modifying the code in Sidebar.swift.