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Application Development with Swift

Chapter 2. Advanced Swift

Now, you have got some experience in the Swift programming language and have seen how funny and easy to learn it is. In this chapter, we will take you to the next level in Swift. We will talk about more advanced topics in Swift. For sure, we can't cover all topics in Swift, but we selected the most important and commonly used ones.

Description

After years of using Objective-C for developing apps for iOS/Mac OS, Apple now offers a new, creative, easy, and innovative programming language for application development, called Swift. Swift makes iOS application development a breeze by offering speed, security and power to your application development process. Swift is easy to learn and has awesome features such as being open source, debugging,interactive playgrounds, error handling model, and so on. Swift has simplified its memory management with Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) and it is compatible with Objective-C. This book has been created to provide you with the information and skills you need to use the new programming language Swift. The book starts with an introduction to Swift and code structure. Following this, you will use playgrounds to become familiar with the language in no time. Then the book takes you through the advanced features offered by Swift and how to use them with your old Objective-C code or projects. You will then learn to use Swift in real projects by covering APIs such as HealthKit, Metal, WatchKit, and Touch ID in each chapter. The book's easy to follow structure ensures you get the best start to developing applications with Swift.

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ahmed May 20, 2017

If you're looking to make an iOS app, and you want to learn how to do it properly this is book the perfect foundation. The amount of detail, thought and effort put forward is apparently clear from the beginning through the end.

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Dima Oct 21, 2015

Book’s caption looks commonly, but its content isn’t so. We wouldn’t learn Swift deeply or get approaches to make applications. And also it’s not about OS X as I guessed at first. This book is for experienced iOS developer with knowledge Objective C.You will find here a lot of useful information. At first you’ll get great Swift course, not deeply, but it’s enough to get rest of this book. Main part of book you will learn new iOS's features, such as Touch ID, HealthKit, Metal and WatchKit. All chapters goes with code examples and screenshots so you never lost. I’m not very good in English but I haven’t any problem in understanding the text.One thing made me disappointed was this book is not about OS X, caption is slightly misleading for me. But it’s OK, I need book about iOS too.Shortly, this book is great booster for your iOS developing skills.

Winston Sep 28, 2015

Application Development with Swift is a great book that will jumpstart iOS development for any budding developer or season objective c developer. The book starts with an thorough introduction to the Swift language by using playgrounds to practice code samples.However, this book is for an Objective C developer. The book shows Objective-C developers how to refactor their code for Swift. MUST BUY!!!

SuJo Nov 05, 2015

I was looking for a book to work with the new Apple Watch, and I decided to give this a try. The information in the book was accurate and easy to follow along. I'm a complete beginner but I do have a background in C++, so the code flow was easy to pick up on and I was up and running in no time at all. I felt the book did what it set out to do, it got me acquainted with Swift. The first few chapters are great for starting out, I didn't feel overwhelmed at all. I was able to pick this book up on Packt Publishing's main site by using my Packtlib membership, it's cheaper than buying multiple books and I can pickup whenever I want.

Scott Steinman Oct 31, 2015

The aim this book is to transition existing Objective-C iOS developers to Swift. Therefore, itdoes not cover the basics of iOS Cocoa Touch programming or how to use Xcode. It covers thecore of the Swift programming language — not every detail, but the important ones for anestablished programmer to begin using Swift as a replacement for Objective-C.One major problem with the current edition of the book is that it uses Xcode 6 and Swift 1.2. Inthe short time since its publication, Apple has moved on to Xcode 7 and Swift 2. The sourcecode examples (when full projects are written rather than playground explorations) will notcompile with Xcode 7. Even after applying Xcode’s Swift 2 migration tool, several errors remainthat prevent compilation. When I tried to fix a few of them manually, the code crashed. Anupdated edition of this book is therefore a necessity. In addition, the book covers iOS 8 andWatchKit 1 — iOS 9 and WatchKit 2 were announced in June and are already released.In addition, while the book enumerates many of the features of Swift, paying more attention tothose not present in Objective-C, it fails to go beyond this to provide tips and tricks, or anyinsight into when and how it is best to use each feature. In this regard, its coverage of Swiftdoes not really add anything that’s not already present in Apple’s free The Swift ProgrammingLanguage eBook.Despite not covering everyday iOS programming in Swift, the book covers a few more recentadditions to iOS such as Touch ID, HealthKit, Metal, App Extensions, and interacting with theApple Watch. Each is covered tersely, and I’m not convinced that the reader could build ameaningful app using these technologies from the coverage offered by this book. Theirinclusion is puzzling to me. While established iOS programmers would need to know how toaccess these new technologies in Swift, not helping them learn how to build the bulk of theirapps or to translate the existing Objective-C Cocoa Touch code to Swift may be a disservice. Afew chapters showing how to use Swift to build a commonly-used type of iOS app would havebeen extremely helpful because it would give the reader basic insight into writing Swift code forinteracting with controls through touch and gestures, interacting with the internet, and othertasks used more commonly than Touch ID, HealthKit, Metal, App Extensions or the AppleWatch. As is, the book feels like two unrelated books — one on some differences between Swiftand Objective-C, and the other a tour of recent additions to iOS 8 — thrown together. What’smissing is what the title promises — how to create an application using Swift.A minor issue is the syntax and grammar of the text. There are many examples of awkwardgrammar, such as “…but take care of some the very important notes…”. Although this does notprevent the reader from understanding the book or grasping the concepts from it, it does detractfrom the enjoyment of reading it a bit. The manuscript should have undergone a more thoroughproofreading by reviewers and the editor.Specific Points:Chapter 1:Chapter 1 is a rapid, minimalist review of the basics of Swift, mostly identifying where it differsfrom Objective-C. The reader would have to access another reference to learn all of the differentways that collections can be manipulated, or how enums can be applied to simplify CocoaTouch code, or how closures can be written (especially with the shortcuts that Swift allows). Twoextremely important Swift language additions, structs and optionals, are not covered at all.Many Cocoa Touch methods have optional return values. Swift iOS programming is not possiblewithout an understanding of optionals and how to unwrap them safely.It is stated that there’s no main function in Swift. That’s definitely true within the playground. Inan iOS project, the @UIApplicationMain operator instructs the compiler to generate the mainfunction for you — it’s there, but you don’t have to deal with it.The discussion of functions states that you type the name (description) before the parameter,and can add # before the name of a parameter if the name is sufficient. This description appliesthe word “name” to two different concepts — description and parameter — so it confuses whichname is sufficient and meaningful. Only by reading the code on the following page does thereader determine that the parameter’s actual name is sufficient, so the description is notneeded.Chapter 2:Chapter 2’s coverage of type casting and checking is very welcome. This topic tends to beskimmed over in other Swift books and mentioned only when first needed in an exampleprogramming. This is especially true for the distinction between as and as?. Likewise, thediscussion of the use of AnyObject vs. Any was nicely done.The coverage of protocols is thorough as it relates to Swift 1, but does not touch upon a keyfeature that has been revealed in Swift 2 — protocol-oriented programming. This is, of course,not the fault of the authors, but it is unfortunate because Apple is promoting the application ofprotocol-oriented programming as a major programming technique in future Swift code.A small point: It’s stated in the section on delegation that if a class wants to use theUITableViewDataSource and UITableViewDelegate methods, it must be a protocol of the table.More correctly stated, since a class cannot be a protocol, the class must conform to theprotocols.In the section “Adding computed properties”, extensions add computed instance properties, notcomputer instance properties.Chapter 4:When an NSSet is created to return the types of data we wish to read or write from HealthKit —the user’s height, weight and birthdate — optional versions are stored. No explanation is givenas to why optionals are needed here.Chapter 5:The author recommends that most graphics applications, other than those written by large gamecompanies, should not use Metal. Why then is Metal included as a topic in this book? I thinkthat Metal is too large a topic to cover adequately in one chapter, if the reader is to learn how towrite a simple 3D program, as 3D engines are quite complicated. An entire book could easily bedevoted to this topic alone.Does the 3D Rendering Pipeline section apply to all 3D engines (including Metal) or only toolder engines? This is not clear to me.Chapter 6:The discussion of customizing interface elements in WatchKit is a bit confusing. First, it’s statedthat you can’t do it. Then the next sentence states that you can add a custom UILabel.Afterwards, it’s stated that you can’t do that in WatchKit. In that middle sentence, should it havestated that in UIKit on iPhones and iPads, you can add a custom UILabel?Note: Groups in WatchKit seem to be analogous the UIStackViews of iOS 9. If this book hadcovered iOS 9 instead of 8, this could have been discussed.Chapter 7:While WatchKit was covered in the previous chapter, no means of communicating between aniPhone and an Apple Watch was provided as an example app. Instead, a Today widget iscreated in Chapter 7’s coverage of app extensions. A WatchKit extension would have been avery useful addition to this chapter.

Application Development with Swift: Develop highly efficient and appealing iOS applications by using the Swift language

What do you get with Print?

Application Development with Swift

Chapter 2. Advanced Swift

Type casting and type checking

Using Any and AnyObject

Protocols

Properties

Extensions

Adding computed properties

Generics

Operator functions

Memory management

Using Objective-C and Swift in a single project

Importing Objective-C in the Swift project

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