Learning Swift: Building Apps for macOS, iOS, and Beyond

Get valuable hands-on experience with Swift, the open source programming language developed by Apple. With this practical guide, skilled programmers with little or no knowledge of Apple development will learn how to code with the latest version of Swift by developing a working iOS app from start to finish.

You’ll begin with Swift programming basics―including guidelines for making your code “Swifty”―and learn how to work with Xcode and its built-in Interface Builder. Then you’ll dive step-by-step into building and customizing a basic app for taking, editing, and deleting selfies. You’ll also tune and test the app for performance and manage the app’s presence in the App Store.

Divided into four parts, this book includes:

Swift 4 basics: Learn Swift’s basic building blocks and the features of object-oriented development Building the Selfiegram app: Build model objects and the UI for your selfie app and add location support, user settings, and notifications Polishing Selfiegram: Create a theme and support for sharing and add custom views, image overlays, and localization Beyond app development: Debug and performance test with Xcode, automate chores with Fastlane, and user-test the app with TestFlight

From the Publisher

From the Preface

Welcome to Learning Swift! This book will help you put the Swift programming language into practice by walking you through the development of a complete application for iOS that features a wide array of features, including camera access, working with the filesystem, face detection, and the iOS graphics system. Along the way, we’ll also introduce you to new and advanced topics in the Swift programming language.

Swift is a pretty amazing modern language, taking the best from other newer languages without reinventing the wheel. Swift is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to make big mistakes in.

Our philosophy is that the best way to learn Swift is to build apps using it! To build apps, though, you need a great framework, and Apple has one of the best ones for building high-quality, featureful software: Cocoa Touch. This book could quite easily be titled Learning Cocoa Touch with Swift, or something similar, because the frameworks are just as important as the language itself. At the time of writing, Swift is currently at version 4, and has a bright future ahead of it.

Audience and Approach

This book is solely focused on Swift 4 and does not cover the use of Objective-C. We might mention it occasionally, but we don’t expect you to know how to use it. We first cover the basics of the Swift 4 language, and then move on to teach as much of the language as we can, as well as the use of Cocoa Touch, through the construction of Selfiegram, a photo-taking app for iOS.

This book’s approach differs from that of other programming books that you may have encountered. As we’ve mentioned, we believe that the best way to learn Swift is to build something using it. We assume that you’re a reasonably capable programmer, but we don’t assume you’ve ever developed for iOS or used Swift or Objective-C before. We also assume that you’re fairly comfortable navigating macOS and iOS as a user.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O’Reilly Media; 3rd edition (May 8, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 376 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 149198757X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1491987575
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.7 x 9.1 inches