Issue 154 – October 9th 2018

Business

We gave our app away for free. What happened next will amaze you.

Giving away your paid app for free. It might seem a bit of an odd decision but as @BenRiceM found out when giving his app Obscura away as part of a recent Apple promotion, it might actually be more beneficial than you think. medium.com

Swift

Best Practices for Building Swift Classes

Although the Swift community generally has a preference for structs over classes, there are still plenty of times we need to use classes within our code. With this in mind, @iosbrain takes a look at some best practices to keep in mind when desigining and implementing classes of your own. appcoda.com

Code

Building a Network Layer with Operations

View controller bloat is an easy trap to fall into. Without careful thought you can easily find yourself adding multiple responsibilities including network handling into your view controller code. A better approach though is to separate out your application logic into separate components. In this in-depth article, @wibosco does just that, showing you how to use Operation , OperationQueue and URLSession to build your own seperate networking layer for your app. williamboles.me

Unleashing the Power of Asset Catalogs and Bundles on iOS

Other than being a place where all your apps assets and resources are stored, you might not have given bundles and asset catalogues too much thought. However, as @_inside points out, when used in combination you can do some interesting things with them such as adding theming to your app. rambo.codes

Manipulating Dates and Time Zones in iOS Development

If you’ve been developing apps for any length of time date and time manipulation may send shivers down your spine however Apple do provide some useful classes and utilities that make working with dates and times significantly easier. Alan Wang has been taking a look. shopspring.com

Building a Museum App with ARKit 2

When ARKit 2 came out, one of the examples Apple used on stage was for a museum app where you could scan a 3D object with your phone, have the app recognize that object and then display the relevant information about the particular exhibit. Now, a few months down the line, @themikekatz shows you how to make your own museum app a reality. raywenderlich.com

iOS12 – Password AutoFill, Automatic Strong Password, and Security Code AutoFill

One of the great new features in iOS 12 is password autofill, easing the process of account setup, password generation and sign-in via the QuickType bar. In this tutorial, @teenivineet shows you how to implement these features in your own app. developerinsider.co

Learn & Master ⚔️ iOS Remote Push Notifications in 10 Minutes

If you’ve never used them before remote push notifications aren’t necessarily the easiest of Apple’s technologies to get started with and yet an increasing amount of functionality is built around them. In this article, @SebastianBoldt gives you a 10 minute crash-course, taking you from the absolute basics to implementing your own custom UI. medium.com

Tools

PublicBetas

In the news section last week I mentioned Apple’s release of public betas for TestFlight – a new TestFlight feature that lets developers invite testers via a public URL. Whilst this is obviously a great step forwards, there was still the issue of how to find people to actually invite… until now. Recognising the problem, @gdorvs and @zachbarongolf have created a new site called @publicbetas that aims to bring developers and beta testers together. publicbetas.com

Xcode Environment Specific Configuration

Configuration information is an important piece of most applications, whether it be build settings, logging, URL endpoints or API keys. Managing all these different values for different environments can be a challenge though so using his NSScreencastd app as an example, @subdigital shares his approach to separating application code from configuration using Xcode build configurations. benscheirman.com

Community

Best iOS hacks from Twitter: September Edition

@LisaDziuba is back with another monthly roundup of all the best iOS development tips from the Twitter-verse. As ever, some great tips inside. flawlessapp.io

Testing

An introduction to UI Testing on iOS

According to a recent Jetbrains survey only 34% of Swift and Objective-C developers are using any sort of UI Testing for their apps. If you’re one of the 66% and are maybe looking to get started then check out this article from @hitherejoe that introduces you to the basics. medium.com

Testing

SwiftConf 2018

Finally, to close things out this week we’ve got a new batch of videos from this years @swiftconf . That’s this weeks play list sorted! medium.com