iOS Collection View Cells: Strong references during reuse / prevent cell reuse?

Question

Question: What happens to references to a collection view cell when it is scrolled offscreen and reused? All my attempts to supply cells without using "dequeue" have failed. Is there a way to tag a cell as non-reusable, so the collection will keep it around? I want to tell the collection "Hey, don't reuse this cell yet!".

Long story: I have a collection view where each cell has a collection view in it. I am using a custom layout (https://github.com/lxcid/LXReorderableCollectionViewFlowLayout) on the sub-collection views to enable dragging and reordering of cells, but I want to extend this to allow dragging cells from one collection view into another. I have it working, except that if a cell is dragged from a collection view that is then scrolled offscreen during the drag, it breaks because the layout handling the gesture, and its collection view, have been reused. The cell with the collection view and reorder-able layout is still doing work, and I need it to not get reused.

Answer 1

Thanks for sharing the long story. It helps to see what you're trying to do. I can understand your approach and can see why you might initially think this is a good logical approach.

However, I'll try to convince you to try to use another approach. The common approach is to take a snapshot of the view during the drag, then add it to the superview and move it around with the drag from one collection to another. Let me know if this approach makes conceptual sense.