Placing a margin around each edge of the UICollect

Question

When the UICollectionView is populated with items they always go right to the edges of the UICollectionView like so:

---------------
|X X X X X X X|
|X X X X X X X|
|X X X X X X X|
|X X X X X X X|
|X X X X X X X|
|X X X X X X X|
---------------

I would like to place a margin around each edge like so:

---------------
| X X X X X X |
| X X X X X X |
| X X X X X X |
| X X X X X X |
| X X X X X X |
| X X X X X X |
---------------

I tried to achieve this by placing the UICollectionView inside its hosting UIView by setting its Frame to simulate a border but it scrolls within the Frame so gets cut off at the top and bottom and the scroller also appears in the bounds of the frame.

I have looked at the API but I cannot see anything obvious to achieve this. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can pretty much control every aspect of the grid with collectionview's protocol. Here's an example:

- (UICollectionViewFlowLayout *)collectionViewFlowLayout
{
    UICollectionViewFlowLayout *flowLayout = [UICollectionViewFlowLayout new];
    flowLayout.itemSize = CGSizeMake(180, 255);
    flowLayout.sectionInset = UIEdgeInsetsMake(10, 30, 0, 30);
    flowLayout.minimumInteritemSpacing = 0.0f;
    flowLayout.minimumLineSpacing = 0.0f;
    flowLayout.scrollDirection = UICollectionViewScrollDirectionVertical;
    return flowLayout;
}

The one you would want to change in your case is the sectionInsets