Application Development with Swift

Hossam Ghareeb

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781785288173
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Application Development
• Index: Computer Science

Develop highly efficient and appealing iOS applications by using the Swift language

About This Book

• Develop a series of applications with Swift using the development kits and new/updated APIs
• Use the new features of iOS 8 to add new flavor to your applications
• A hands-on guide with detailed code snippets to aid you in developing powerful Swift applications

Who This Book Is For

If you are an iOS developer with experience in Objective-C, and wish to develop applications with Swift, then this book is ideal for you. Familiarity with the fundamentals of Swift is an added advantage but not a necessity.

What You Will Learn

• Use playgrounds in Xcode to make the writing of Swift code productive and easy
• Get acquainted with the advanced features of Swift and make complete use of them in your code
• Add a new method for authentication to your app using Touch ID
• Develop health-related apps using HealthKit
• Take your apps to the next level of performance and capability using Metal
• Develop applications for wearables using WatchKit
• Use Notification Center to easily access all your notifications
• Make your users devices more stylish by using Apple's built-in Quick Type keyboard, instead of the native one

In Detail

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.

Style and approach

The book achieves its end goal by dividing its content into two parts. Part 1 will take the readers, who are new to Swift, through its architecture and basics. Part 2 of the book will cover content on application development with Swift.

Application Development with Swift

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Table of Contents

Application Development with Swift

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more

Why subscribe?

Free access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Hello Swift

Introduction to Swift

Playgrounds

The code structure

Arrays

Initializing an array

Iterating over arrays

Appending items

Removing and updating items

Dictionaries

Initializing a dictionary

Appending or updating values

Removing items from the dictionary

Enum

Using enumerations with the switch statement

Enumerations with associated values

Functions

Closures

Summary

2. Advanced Swift

Type casting and type checking

Downcasting

Using Any and AnyObject

Protocols

Properties

Methods

Class-only protocols

Protocol compositions

The protocol conformance

The optional requirements

Delegation

Extensions

Adding computed properties

Adding new initializers

Adding methods

Generics

Operator functions

Memory management

Using Objective-C and Swift in a single project

Importing Objective-C in the Swift project

Importing Swift in the Objective-C project

Limitations

Summary

3. Touch ID

What is Touch ID?

The LocalAuthentication framework

Summary

4. Introduction to HealthKit

What is HealthKit?

HealthKit limitations

HealthKit privacy

Getting started with HealthKit

Configuring the Xcode project

Getting your hands dirty with HealthKit

The HealthKit store

Asking for permissions

Updating the UI

Sharing data in the Health app

Summary

5. Introduction to Metal

What is Metal?

Features

3D rendering

Pipeline

Transformations

Projection

Other options to work with 3D rendering in iOS

Getting started with Metal

Devices and CAMetalLayers

The command queue

Vertex and color buffers

Vertex and fragment shaders

The render pipeline

The game loop and rendering

The display link

The render pass

The command buffer

Summary

6. Introduction to WatchKit

Apple watch

WatchKit

The WatchKit app

Glances

Actionable notifications

Working with WatchKit

Xcode targets

Interface controllers

Interface elements

Groups

Navigating interfaces

Presenting modally

Animation

Working with glances

Summary

7. Swift App Extensions

App extensions

Today

Share

Photo Editing

Document Provider

Understanding the Document Provider's lifecycle

The custom keyboard

Keyboard security

Keyboard settings

Working with the custom keyboard

Demo

Summary

Index

Application Development with Swift

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: August 2015

Production reference: 1250815

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78528-817-3

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Author

Hossam Ghareeb

Reviewers

Tyler Hackbart

David Mattia

Hossam M. Sherif

Kenneth Strickland

Commissioning Editor

Julian Ursell

Acquisition Editor

Nikhil Karkal

Content Development Editor

Shali Deeraj

Technical Editor

Prajakta Mhatre

Copy Editor

Charlotte Carneiro

Project Coordinator

Kinjal Bari

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Tejal Soni

Graphics

Sheetal Aute

Disha Haria

Production Coordinator

Melwyn D'sa

Cover Work

Melwyn D'sa

About the Author

Hossam Ghareeb is a software engineer who graduated from the computer and system engineering department of Alexandria University in 2012. Currently, he is an iOS software engineer at Prototype Interactive in Dubai. He has a lot of experience in iOS development and software engineering; he always keeps himself up to date with new technologies. It is his passion to help people by sharing his experience and writing tutorials to get people engaged quickly without problems. His favorite hobbies are fishing and playing video games, especially FIFA and PES. If you need his help or wish to go fishing with him, then you can contact him at <[email protected]>.

I would like to thank each and every person who has been helpful to me, from my teaching staff to my friends. A special thanks to my lovely wife, Amira, for all her support and encouragement in spite of all the time this book kept me away from her. I thank my son, Yusuf, for inspiring me. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude toward my parents for teaching me how to be a good person.

Last but not least, I would like to thank the content editors, Shali Deeraj and Nikhil Karkal, for helping me and being nice to me, and the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

About the Reviewers

Tyler Hackbart is a web developer, designer, and technology enthusiast with a passion for everything in technology. Through self-learning, he gained the ability to write his first line of code when he was only 16 years old and has just started learning his sixth programming language. With his farm-raised work ethic, alongside a passion for crafting amazing user interactions and doing what he loves, Tyler has successfully worked in the technology field for 2 years. He is the cofounder of three start-ups and works in an application design firm, all based in Waterloo, Canada.

David Mattia is a student at the University of Notre Dame with a passion for software engineering. He has worked for General Electric Aviation and spends much of his free time doing freelance work.

Hossam M. Sherif is a software developer. He received his bachelor's degree in computer and system engineering from Alexandria University. He has spent several years in software development, especially in iOS and backend...

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• Application Development with Swift