Animating auto layout constraint change on UIColle

Question

Following on from a previous SO question which I asked, I am attempting to animate the change in height of a UICollectionView (which is yellowBox in the example). This change in height is being triggered by modifying the auto layout constraints on the collection view with the following code:

- (IBAction)expandYellowBox:(id)sender {

[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5
                 animations:^{
                     self.yellowBoxHeightConstraint.constant += 50;
                     [self.view layoutIfNeeded];
                 }];
}

However, when I call [self.view layoutIfNeeded] this results in the collection view being reloaded, so it flashes visibly to the user. However, I don't want the collection view to reload but instead just to animate its height change. Is there any way to either avoid -layoutIfNeeded reloading the collection view, or an alternative way to animate the constraint height change which doesn't call a method which has the side-effect of reloading the collection view?

Answer 1

In case anyone else encounters this problem, it was because I was actually calling [self.collectionView reloadData] a few lines above the animation block (and didn't notice!). It seems that calling -reloadData and -layoutIfNeeded causes the collection view to flash. Removing the call to -reloadData resolves the problem.