AXKit

AXKit is a lightweight Swift package that automatically generates structured accessibility identifiers for your UIKit views. It was written to simplify automated UI testing by giving every view a consistent, predictable identifier derived from the property that owns it.

Features

• Automatically assigns accessibility identifiers to every UIView property of a type.
• Builds hierarchical identifiers from the owning type, property name, and optional index, indexPath, and purpose metadata.
• Uses reflection (Mirror), so there is no boilerplate per view.
• Active only in DEBUG builds, so it has zero impact on release/production apps.
• Distributed exclusively via Swift Package Manager.

Requirements

• iOS 12.0+
• Swift 5.9+
• Xcode 15+

Installation

AXKit is distributed via Swift Package Manager.

Xcode

In Xcode, go to File → Add Package Dependencies…, enter the repository URL, and add the AXKit library to your target:

https://github.com/D-Integral/AXKit.git

Package.swift

Add AXKit to the dependencies of your Package.swift:

dependencies: [
    .package(url: "https://github.com/D-Integral/AXKit.git", from: "0.1.4")
]

Then add "AXKit" to the dependencies of any target that needs it:

.target(
    name: "YourTarget",
    dependencies: ["AXKit"]
)

Usage

Step 1: Conform your type to Accessible

Any class can adopt the Accessible protocol. It has no requirements—conforming simply unlocks the setupAccessibilityIdentifiersForViewProperties(withAccessibilityInfo:) helper.

import UIKit
import AXKit

class MyViewController: UIViewController, Accessible {
    @IBOutlet weak var titleLabel: UILabel!
    @IBOutlet weak var actionButton: UIButton!

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        setupAccessibilityIdentifiersForViewProperties()
    }
}

Step 2: (Optional) Provide additional metadata

Pass an AccessibilityInfo value to disambiguate views that appear in lists, collections, or repeated contexts. Every field is optional:

let info = AccessibilityInfo(indexPath: IndexPath(row: 0, section: 1),
                             purpose: "testing")
setupAccessibilityIdentifiersForViewProperties(withAccessibilityInfo: info)

AccessibilityInfo is defined as:

public struct AccessibilityInfo {
    public let index: Int?
    public var indexPath: IndexPath?
    public let purpose: String?

    public init(index: Int? = nil,
                indexPath: IndexPath? = nil,
                purpose: String? = nil)
}

Identifier format

Each UIView property receives an identifier built from the owning type and property name, followed by the optional metadata in this order:

<TypeName>.<propertyName>[.s<section>-r<row>][.<index>][.<purpose>]

Example

For a button property named actionButton on MyViewController, with indexPath (section 1, row 0) and purpose "testing", the resulting identifier is:

MyViewController.actionButton.s1-r0.testing

With no AccessibilityInfo, the same button would simply be:

MyViewController.actionButton

How it works

• The library reflects over self using Mirror and assigns an accessibilityIdentifier to every child whose value is a UIView.
• A trailing .storage suffix (added by some property wrappers) is stripped from the property name before it is used.
• All of this runs only when the DEBUG flag is set, so release builds are completely unaffected.

This makes AXKit especially handy for UI testing with XCTest, where stable, human-readable identifiers make queries far easier to write and maintain.

License

AXKit is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.

Author

Dmytro Skorokhod