Adventures in Swift and iOS App Development
Have you ever seen some factory method in UIKit and see this strange parameter called completion or completionHandler? Usually you put nil there and leave it alone. These strange things like (Double,Double) -> Bool things are closures. Closures are functions you use as types, often in parameters of other functions. In this lesson we'll explore …
In this lesson, we’ll take a look at tab bar controllers and how to add them in the storyboard. For more on implementing them completely in code see Swift Swift: Using Tab Bar Controllers in Swift. For more on data sharing once set up in the storyboard, see Passing Data in Tab Bar controllers The …
Continue reading "Tab Bar Controllers in Xcode 8 Storyboards"
Almost every iPhone and iPad now has a camera. Many people want to use a camera in their apps for various reasons. While you may not be building the next Instagram or Twitter, there are many places where photo documentation comes in handy. There are two ways to use the camera. The more powerful and …
Continue reading "How to Use UIImagePickerController for a Camera and Photo Library in Swift 3.0."
Everyone may remember when Apple first introduced MapKit to replace Google Maps on iPhones, they ended up to apologizing. However over time, developers have found how easy it is to use MapKit. This API provides features which make using both 2D and 3D maps very easy. More importantly, Google charges for map views over a …
Continue reading "How to Use MapKit for 2D and 3D Map Views."
Ever wanted that sliding sidebar or an alert with a image picker? Apple has many great ways of presenting view controllers, but sometimes we want something different, something new. For that we subclass UIPresentationController. However there's a few concepts that you'll need to wrap your head around first. In this lesson we'll create a few …
Continue reading "The Step by Step Guide to Custom Presentation Controllers"
Have you ever wondered how to put user defined settings for your app into the settings app? Xcode can create a special property list called a settings bundle which can append the NSUserDefaults with more entries from Settings App. You'll find out in this lesson how to set up a settings bundle in your app …
It's rare to have a one controller application, even in something as small as the Apple watch. Multiple View Controllers, or Interface Controllers as they are called in WatchKit, need ways to move between controllers. WatchOS2 has a simplified version of the iOS navigation types. In this lesson we'll explore these three types of navigation …
This will be the first in a series of lessons on persistence in iOS applications. Persistence is keep data around even if your app ends. As we'll see in this series there are many techniques to save and read data. One Common one Apple uses frequently in Xcode is the Property list, or plist, named …
Continue reading "How to Use Property Lists (.plist) in Swift"
In the beginning there was the unsigned integer, and it was good. If you go deep into machine code you will still find that any device is nothing more than unsigned integers. All other values Int, Float, Bool, Character, and String are forms or collections of unsigned integers. To a modern high-level language like Swift, …
Continue reading "How and Why To Use Unsigned Integers (UInt)"
Table views are a lot like potato chips: You can't have just one. Often, table views relate to each other in what is often referred to as a drill-down. Drill downs typically take the selected data and provide another list in a table about the selection. It creates a hierarchical selection. You might have a …
