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iOS & Swift

SwiftUI Apprentice

Apr 19 2023 , Swift 5.7, iOS 16, Xcode 14.2 Swift 5.7, iOS 16, Xcode 14.2

If you're new to iOS programming, this is the book for you! Learn to build beautiful, fully-functional apps using Apple’s hottest user interface technology: SwiftUI! By Caroline Begbie & Audrey Tam.

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Who is this for?

This book is for developers who are new to iOS and to SwiftUI.

Covered concepts

  • Using Xcode
  • Coding in Swift
  • Designing and developing user interfaces with SwiftUI
  • Modeling and persisting data
  • Accessing remote APIs
  • iPad development

SwiftUI Apprentice is a series of epic-length tutorials where you’ll learn to build three complete apps from scratch, using Apple’s new user interface technology: SwiftUI! Each app is more advanced than the one before, and together, they cover everything to make your own apps using SwiftUI. By the end of...

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Before You Begin

This section tells you a few things you need to know before you get started, such as what you’ll need for hardware and software, where to find the project files for this book, and more.

i
What You Need
ii
Book Source Code & Forums
iii
Dedications
iv
About the Team
v
How to Read This Book

Section I: Your First App: HIITFit

At WWDC 2019, Apple surprised and delighted the developer community with the introduction of SwiftUI, a declarative way of building user interfaces. With SwiftUI, you build your user interface by combining fundamental components such as colors, buttons, text labels, lists and more into beautiful and functional views. Your views react to changes in the data they display, updating automatically without any intervention from you!

In this section, you’ll begin your journey to becoming a SwiftUI developer by developing an app called HIITFit, a High Intensity Interval Training Fitness tracker. Along the way, you’ll:

  • Learn how to use Xcode.
  • Discover how to plan and prototype an app.
  • Explore the basic components of SwiftUI.
  • Understand how data moves in a SwiftUI app and how to make it persist.
  • Learn fundamental concepts of Swift, the programming language, needed to build your app.
1
Checking Your Tools
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Check your tools are working so nothing slows you down when you dive into this book. Install Xcode and create a new project to take a quick tour of Xcode and Swift basics. You'll learn some tips for using Xcode efficiently.
Planning a Paged App
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Plan your app by listing what the user will see and what the app will do. Start learning how to use Xcode, Swift and SwiftUI as you set up a paging tab view.
Prototyping the Main View
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Learn more about Xcode, Swift and SwiftUI while you create subviews to build the most complex view of your app.
Prototyping Supplementary Views
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Learn how to use Date, Form, ZStack and Button to lay out the other full-screen views of your app.
Moving Data Between Views
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In this chapter, you use @State, @Binding and @Environment properties to implement navigation features, set ratings and show and hide modal sheets and subviews.
Observing Objects
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In this chapter, you'll replace the prototype exercise timer with a `TimeLineView` and log the user's activity in an @EnvironmentObject.
Saving Settings
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Learn to use @AppStorage and @SceneStorage to save your app state. You'll also learn your app's sandbox file system and how to enable multiple windows on iPadOS.
Saving History Data
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Learn about closures, Swift error handling, closures and property list serialization on your way to saving and restoring HIITFit's history data.
Refining Your App
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Make your app pop visually by styling the user interface to match the vision of a professional designer.
Working With Datasets
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Amp up your display and management of historical exercise data. Learn to use SwiftUI's Charting package to display the data graphically.
Managing Data With Property Wrappers
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Learn about the ways SwiftUI manages data through your view hierarchy. Discover how to answer the question "struct or class"? Explore the natural architecture pattern for SwiftUI apps: Model-View (MV).
Apple App Development Ecosystem
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Get a bird's eye view of the whole Apple app development ecosystem with a brief history of SwiftUI, a summary of Apple Developer resources and tips on housekeeping and trouble-shooting.

Section II: Your Second App: Cards

Now that you’ve completed your first app, it’s time to apply your knowledge and build a new app from scratch. In this section, you’ll build a photo collage app called Cards and you’ll start from a blank template. Along the way, you’ll:

  • Dive more deeply into Swift’s ways of representing data.
  • Learn how to support user gestures.
  • Discover how Xcode and iOS manage app assets such as images and colors.
  • Explore more robust ways of saving and restoring data.
  • Translate a designer’s vision into reality in your app.
Outlining a Photo Collage App
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Begin work on your second app. You'll start with an initial idea and a blank slate in Xcode. From there, you'll build a basic view and a toolbar.
Gestures
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Learn how to use gestures and build a resizable view, convert it to a view modifier and apply it to other views in your design.
Structures, Classes & Protocols
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Learn how to design and build a data model. Create a single source of truth and implement the necessary steps to Read and Update your app's data.
Adding Assets to Your App
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Learn to add assets of all varieties — icons, images, colors — to your app. Along the way, you'll learn how to adjust these assets for different traits such as device size and dark mode. Finally, learn to load assets lazily to keep your app responsive.
Adding Photos to Your App
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Learn how users can add their own photos to their cards using the PhotosUI framework. Explore the Transferable protocol and implement drag-and-drop and copy / paste to add images from other apps.
Paths & Custom Shapes
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Learn to draw shapes and use them as clipping masks to frame the pictures in your Cards app.
Saving Files
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Learn to save and restore your card compositions. Along the way, you'll discover Swift's powerful `Codable` facility and learn to save arbitrary data types.
Delightful UX — Layout
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Change your user interface to match your designer's vision. Go beyond the basics and learn more advanced SwiftUI layout techniques.
Delightful UX — Final Touches
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Make your app sparkle by adding animations, view transitions, a share sheet and more!

Section III: Your Third App: TheMet

You’ve now built two apps with beautiful user interfaces. But, you’re probably wondering how to build an app that accesses resources on the internet. Fear not! In this section, you’ll build TheMet, an app that allows you to view items in the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — better known as The Met. Along the way, you’ll:

  • Learn how to build lists of information and navigate between views using SwiftUI.
  • Discover the intricacies of REST APIs and how to use them.
  • Explore iOS’s networking support using a Swift Playground.
  • Learn to how add support for iOS Widgets to your app.
Lists & Navigation
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Use the SwiftUI List view to present a collection of items in a view that scrolls vertically. Manage a navigation stack in your app's navigation hierarchy with NavigationStack. Open URLs in the default browser and download images with AsyncImage.
Just Enough Web Stuff
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Learn about HTTP requests and responses by using Postman and metmuseum.github.io to explore the metmuseum.org API with some help from the GitHub API.
Downloading Data
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Use URLComponents to create a query URLRequest and send it in a URLSession. Learn how to decode JSON values into your app's data model and ensure view updates run on the main queue.
Widgets
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Add a widget to your app. The widget can run its own networking tasks or you can create an app group to share your app's data with your widget.
Conclusion