A modern approach to handling navigation in SwiftUI using an imperative style. This method simplifies view logic by extracting navigation concerns, improving testability, and making the codebase more maintainable.
Medium Article: Link
While SwiftUI promotes declarative navigation with NavigationStack and NavigationLink, complex navigation flows can become difficult to manage. Imperative navigation allows:
- Decoupling navigation logic from views.
- Better testability by moving navigation handling to a dedicated coordinator.
- Improved maintainability by centralizing navigation in a single source of truth.
- Navigation managed outside of views.
- Supports deep linking and complex navigation flows.
- Clean and structured architecture using a navigation coordinator.
- iOS 16.0+
- Xcode 15+
- Swift 5.9+
Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/ahmdmhasn/swiftui-imperative-navigation.git
cd swiftui-imperative-navigationOpen SwiftUIImperativeNavigation.xcodeproj in Xcode and run the sample project.
The NavigationCoordinator acts as the central controller for handling navigation events.
@MainActor
public final class NavigationController: ObservableObject {
func push<V: View>(_ view: V)
func pop()
func popToRoot()
func present<V: View>(_ view: V)
func sheet<V: View>(_ view: V)
func dismiss()
}The NavigationView works with the NavigationController.
struct NavigationView<Root: View>: View {
...
var body: some View {
NavigationStack(path: $controller.path) {
root
.navigationDestination(for: Route.self, destination: \.body)
.fullScreenCover(item: $controller.modal, content: \.route.body)
.sheet(item: $controller.modal, content: \.route.body)
}
}
}@MainActor
final class DefaultCoordinator {
let navigationController = NavigationController()
func navigateToB() {
navigationController.push(ViewB(coordinator: self)) // Push SwiftUI.View
}
func navigateToC() {
let coordinatorC = DefaultCoordinatorC { [weak self] in
self?.navigationController.dismiss() // Dismiss presented modal
}
coordinatorC.start(from: navigationController) // Present coordinator
}
}struct HomeView: View {
let coordinator: Coordinator
var body: some View {
Button("Go to Details") {
coordinator.navigateToB()
}
}
}- Add unit tests for navigation logic.
- Extend examples for more navigation patterns (modals, tab-based navigation).
- Provide better state persistence handling.
Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.
This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.
If you find this project helpful, give it a ⭐ on GitHub!