How to get index in Foreach in SwiftUI

Posted on 7 Dec 2023 . 3 min read

In SwiftUI, the ForEach is used to iterate over a collection of data and create views dynamically based on that data. If you need the index of the current element while using ForEach, you can achieve this by using the following ways along with ForEach:

You can use a range and iterate through it
You can use the indices property of a collection
You can achieve this by using the enumerated() method

#Using range and count

If you want to use a range of indices with a count in SwiftUI’s ForEach loop, you can create a Range and iterate through it. Here's an example:

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    let items = ["Milk", "Bread", "Cookies", "Tea"]

    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            ForEach(0..<items.count, id: \.self) { index in
                Text("\(index): \(items[index])")
            }
        }
    }
}

In this example:

0..<items.count creates a range of indices from 0 to items.count - 1.
ForEach uses this range of indices. id: \.self is used to identify each element uniquely.
Inside the ForEach loop, items[index] is used to access each item using the index.

This method allows you to iterate through a range of indices based on the count of your collection and access the elements within the ForEach loop in SwiftUI.

#Using indices property

In SwiftUI, you can use the indices property of a collection to access the indices while iterating through the elements using ForEach. Here's an example of how you can use indices to get the index within a ForEach loop. Here’s an example:

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    let items = ["Milk", "Bread", "Cookies", "Tea"]

    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            ForEach(items.indices, id: \.self) { index in
                Text("\(index): \(items[index])")
            }
        }
    }
}

In this example:

items.indices gives you a range of indices for the items array.
ForEach uses this range of indices. id: \.self is used to identify each element uniquely.
Inside the ForEach loop, items[index] is used to access each item using the index.

This approach allows you to iterate through the indices of the collection and use those indices to access the elements within the ForEach loop in SwiftUI.

#Using enumerated() method

If you need the index of the current element while using ForEach, you can achieve this by using the enumerated() method along with ForEach. Here’s an example:

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    let items = ["Milk", "Bread", "Cookies", "Tea"]

    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            ForEach(Array(items.enumerated()), id: \.1) { index, item in
                Text("\(index): \(item)")
            }
        }
    }
}

In this example:

enumerated() is used to get a sequence of pairs (index, value) from the items array.
Array(items.enumerated()) converts the enumerated sequence into an array of tuples.
ForEach iterates through this array of tuples, where index and item represent the index and value, respectively.
id: \.1 is used to specify a unique identifier for each row in the ForEach loop. \0 refers to the first element of the tuple (which is the index) and \1 refers to the second element (which is the item).

This way, you can access the index and item simultaneously within the ForEach loop in SwiftUI.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or queries. Follow me on twitter @gurjitpt for any updates.

Thanks!

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Gurjit Singh

I’m Computer Science graduate and an iOS Engineer who writes about Swift and iOS development. Follow me for more updates:

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