AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers

Swift in the cloud, Swift as function, Swift now has async Algorithms

March 28, 2022 Jeroen Leenarts Episode 74
AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers
Swift in the cloud, Swift as function, Swift now has async Algorithms
AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers +
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Show Notes Transcript
Jeroen Leenarts:

Hi, and welcome to the 74th episode of my podcast. My name is loneliness. And I've been developing software for over 20 years developing iOS apps for 10 years, and I'm running Dutch Cocottes for over nine years. If you're an iOS app developer, you should listen to a podcast because it will keep you updated on interesting articles conference and events you might not have heard about. In this episode, I'm going to talk about consistence with style and Xcode with Swift lint, introducing swift async algorithms, working with difficult data source and table views using UI kit. Getting Started with cloudkit. Getting started with Swift AWS lambda runtime, the overcast app redesign part one. So let's get started. So last week went well, or my daughter went to her experience at the other school. And so she really enjoyed it. So now we have to do the rest of the process. And hopefully this works out positively. And in the meantime, I've been working with my team at stream on my presentation at swift heroes. Now, I should say our presentation at swift heroes, because Stefan stepped out. But Mrs. stepped in as a co speaker at the conference, all trips and all flights and all hotels have been arranged. I also have two people who will be joining the online part of the scriptures conference. So all in all, we'll be attending with a team of six people, which will be awesome, I think, very much looking forward to it. Then even my wife pitched in with some great ideas on the talk structure. Really, she's a schoolteacher. So she knows pretty good how to capture an audience and make sure that you do a solid presentation, right? So yeah, lots of prepper going on, and just plenty of stuff to do. Still working and waiting for the results of my secret project as a budget request being done there. And hopefully, I can get some resolution on that soon. And then we can also hopefully publicly talk about it. It's because it's like a really cool thing. And I think it might actually be one of the biggest things I did for the iOS community in my career thus far. I'm not doing the work myself. I've just been arranging things, but who knows. So yeah, just to get started with the first article, consistent streetstyle X code bits fifth lens. I am familiar with Strickland as a tool. But on his blog, Eric Callanan gives a nice write up on why using a consistent style using Swift Lint is convenient for your project and how you can actually integrate swiftly and locally with your Xcode project and how you should interpret and how you can adjust all the rule violations that you're bound to run into if you're using Swift lint, right. He also goes into detail on the AutoCorrect feature swift lens. And yeah, it's it's a good nice overview. If you're not familiar yet with Swift lens, I think you'll like it. And if you're not using Swift Linde yet, after this article, you might actually try it. Second article is introducing swift async algorithms to this. This is something that was published on the swift.org website, I'm still very much digging into this myself, it was released like a couple days ago, haven't seen much online activity yet with people diving into the async algorithms of swift.org. Interesting things in there because they provide async await compatible algorithms, algorithms like zip combined latest merge chain buffer, debounce and throttle. So if you've been working with these terms, in your own code, you did your own implementation with those either with async await or maybe with combine definitely have look at this one because it might make things a lot simpler in your code. It is a third party dependency that you will be integrating with your code base. But this is a third party dependency that is supported by Apple itself and by Swift. Org. So it should be something that is here to stay with us for a long while, definitely check it out, because there's really cool samples in their in their documentation. And I haven't played around with code that much myself. But all in all, it looks really solid and very usable. So check it out. Debo Bowditch did a nice write up again, on his blog. It's titled working with difficult data source and table views using UI kits. And it's basically an overview of using default data sources. It's a feature that's been introduced, I think in in the latest iOS version. And it's just a solid overview on how you can use default data source because it ties in quite nicely with the talk I'm going to be giving at swift heroes, which talks about how you as an iOS developer, even though you still call yourself an iOS developer, you've you will change over the years, sir, looking at the skill sets that you need for for instance, UI Kit has changed a lot over the years as well. For instance, you don't use data sources, the standard ones anymore, but you use different data sources. And yeah, that's probably why this article beats and interest with me, because I haven't done much with difficult data sources yet myself. But yeah, it's a good overview. It's a nice read. And as you can expect from TV It's a very thorough read. So take some time to process what he has written. And I think you will like this one as well. Then the next one is an article by my cheat if you're looking into some sort of backend for your next project, and you don't want to have too much complication in there, and you just want to have something that does the basics for you, then definitely check this one out, it's called Getting Started with Cloud kit. Cloud kit is an easy way to store data in the cloud sync between multiple devices and shared between the Apps users so you can actually share data between different users on off your app if you're using Cloud kit. So and this week, Majeed writes an article about how you can start using cloudkit in the apps that you write to save fetch data from the clouds and sync those data items between multiple user devices. It goes over the basics of how you can deal with clouds get records and how you can get this data into clouds gates, and now also how you can get data out of clouds gates. And once you have a common understanding of the basics, you can probably figure out the rest on your own by either looking for other resources or having a look in the documentation by Apple, which is very thorough on this area. So yeah, cloud kit is very cool and convenient environment that is just available if you develop for iOS. So if you have never looked at it before, maybe do check it out for your next project to see if it's something that you could use. If you need something that is a little bit more complicated, or you want to have a challenge for yourself. Maybe look at the next article by Philip Rucker, it's called Getting Started with fifth AWS lambda runtimes. It's a tutorial that shows you how to get started with fifth AWS lambda runtimes to create and deploy serverless function on AWS with Swift a lot of terminology in there. So AWS, that's Amazon Web Services, probably most people know that the lambda runtime is actually a function as a service type thing that that Amazon provides, that allows you to deploy pieces of code to their infrastructure. And that is basically executed on requests. And there's different reasons, or different triggers for the execution of your request. But one of them could be a network request that you're doing from your app or some other place, these lambda functions, they rely on what what is called a lambda runtime, and it just so happens to be that as a swift based lambda runtime available as well. And in his article, Moritz goes over the details of getting started with these lambda runtimes in the Swift flavors, so that you can actually run Swift code in the AWS lambda environment as like Functions as a Service. It is an introduction into the concept of serverless. Computing. And the nice thing about AWS lambda is that it's something that has access to all the other services available on the AWS platform as well. So you can query data from s3, you can be triggered from s3, same goes for DynamoDB, CloudFront, or API gateway, there's all kinds of ways that you can actually get data into your lambda function, or that you can output data from your lambda functions. So it's, it's a quite involved article, nice thing is, is that it's all based on a shift package. So it's all standard swift stuff that you have to do to get things going. So you can in some level, tested locally as well. But then the deployment part, that's where the tricky bits start. But this article gives you a good overview of how to do that and how to actually get started with this interesting feature on the AWS stack. There's a lot of screenshots in there that show the AWS console, so you will need an AWS account to be able to access and perform the steps of this tutorial. But I think if it's something that's interesting to you, or you need something that is more flexible than cloudkit, which is low cost, then this is probably something you want to look into as well. The final article is by Marco Arment. It's on his blog, Marco dork, and it's the overcast redesign. I'm personally a fan of his podcasting app. And yeah, I really liked the new design that Marco has done to his app. And also really enjoy reading about his thoughts behind some choices that he made in sense of the design of the app, if you like podcasting, and while you listen to my podcast, so there's good chance that you do, then check out this article. And if you're not using overcast yet, I'd recommend checking out his podcasting app as well. It's it's a free download. And that's really cool features in there that you might like, and it has like a new fresh design going for it as well. It's not fully complete yet, but most of the important screens are already transitioned to the new design. So check out the article on marco.org. I'll be going to Swift heroes next week. So if you're there, please give me a shout out on Twitter beforehand, because then maybe we can. If I just am aware that you are there, then there's a better chance of me spotting you in the crowd that's walking around there and I really I hope to meet some of the people that I've been meeting online, former podcasts and also some of the people listening to a podcast. So definitely, if you spot me there on the conference, walk up to me and just state who you are and tell me why you came up to me and what you like about podcasts or anything. Just talk to me and I look forward to that. Probably, I'll be wearing some stream swag. But that's also because I'm there any capacity of my job for stream? So if I'm talking too much about stream at the conference, then do let me know and I can try and adjust a little bit there. I can also switch to talking about new podcasts, right. So I'm quickly gonna wrap up and continue creating and producing content and working with a team and getting a podcast out and just keeping busy and getting ready for the conference next week. So talk to you again next week. And look forward to meeting you in person. If you have any feedback, please mentioned it on Twitter, sent me a DM or sent me a tweet in the open at app force one