Understand How to Use SwiftUI, Apple's New UI Framework
Apple’s newest UI framework, SwiftUI, may be used to design interfaces for iOS, tvOS, macOS, and watchOS. Apple introduced SwiftUI in 2019, and development on the Framework has proceeded significantly since then. Apple’s SwiftUI provides developers with a framework for rapidly prototyping new app ideas. This course will teach you all you need to know about using SwiftUI to create applications.
What Is SwiftUI?
Apple didn’t invent the wheel or SwiftUI, which uses fundamentally different ideas from UIKit and AppKit. SwiftUI is very new, yet it feels instantly comfortable to use. It also has capabilities for making your views and animating or adding motion. Lists, stacks, buttons, and selectors, along with the rest of the UIKit and AppKit components you know and love, are all included in this Framework.
Essential technologies like accessibility and flexible design were considered throughout the Framework’sFramework’s development. SwiftUI’s goal is to make it possible for developers to focus on the value propositions of their applications rather than the complexities of building user interfaces. It is what Apple hopes SwiftUI will do.
UIKit and AppKit
Despite its unique features, SwiftUI still relies on UIKit and AppKit to build your project’s user interface. Under the scenes, your app still uses UIKit and AppKit’s UIViews and NSViews. Unlike UIKit and AppKit, SwiftUI’s user interface is defined declaratively.
What exactly is involved?
With UIKit and AppKit, you build the view hierarchy of your app’s user interface. With SwiftUI, it doesn’t work like that. Using SwiftUI, developers can access an API to declare or describe the user interface. SwiftUI analyzes the declaration or description of the UI and uses it to produce the UI for your project. With SwiftUI, you’ll never have to lift a finger again. In this series, we will discuss the interconnected nature of these topics.
Apple’s New UI Framework Update
JavaScriptCore
Projects written in Swift, Objective-C, or C may utilize the JavaScriptCore Framework to execute and evaluate JavaScript code. It can also be used to introduce new objects to the JavaScript runtime.
SpriteKit
SpriteKit is great for games and apps that demand many sprite animation possibilities due to its architecture. SpriteKit’s graphics rendering and animation framework allows sprites to be animated. SpriteKit alternates between calculating and drawing frames. You pick the frame’s contents and evolution. SpriteKit renders frames using graphics hardware. SpriteKit makes transitions, animations, and other effects easy.
Game Controller
Allow for input from other sources. The Game Controller framework identifies and gathers information from game controllers inserted into a device. Creating a control profile for your device lets you map its buttons to the correct in-game actions. After a profile has been loaded from the controller, its controls’ values may be queried through polling, or event handlers can be attached to be fired if a control’s value changes at any time.
Multipeer Connectivity
Message-based data, streaming data, and resource sharing are just how the Multipeer Connectivity architecture makes it possible to identify and take advantage of the services offered by devices close (such as files). iOS relies on Wi-Fi networks (both public and private), peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth LANs for direct transmission. Wi-Fi Direct, and Ethernet are all supported networking protocols in macOS and tvOS.
AdSupport
The Ad Support framework gives programs a unique identification for providing ads and a mark indicating whether users have restricted ad tracking. Apps must recognize the opt-out flag to use the advertising identification.
PassKit
Accept Apple Pay in your app. Make, distribute, and update Wallet passes. Apple Pay and Wallet pass management are possible with PassKit.
Core Bluetooth
The Core Bluetooth framework offers classes for connecting your applications with Bluetooth low-energy devices. Do not subclass Core Bluetooth classes. Overriding these classes is unsupported and undefined.
GLKit
Boost OpenGL ES or OpenGL app development. The GLKit FrameworkFramework contains methods and classes that make it easier to construct shader-based applications or port apps that use fixed-function vertex or fragment processing from prior OpenGL ES or OpenGL versions. Employ math libraries, background texture loading, pre-created shader effects, and a common view and view controller to design your rendering loop.
Core Media
Represent time-based audio-visual elements using key data types. The media pipeline used by AVFoundation and other high-level media frameworks on Apple devices is described by the Core Media framework. Utilize Core Media’s low-level data types and APIs to process media samples and manage media data queues quickly.
Core Image
Process pictures and videos using built-in or custom filters. Core Image processes still and video pictures quickly. Employ built-in image filters to process photographs and create complicated effects.
Understand How to Use SwiftUI
Apple’s SwiftUI solution. Apple announced SwiftUI during WWDC 2019. It transforms iOS app development. It is Swift’s largest impact on Apple’s developer ecosystem (including iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS). Developers have long debated whether to utilize Storyboards or programmatically design the app Interface.
Working with Images
Another fundamental component used in iOS app creation, in addition to text, is images. While working with photos in SwiftUI, developers may use a view named Image. Now that you should understand SwiftUI and how to display textual content let’s look at how to show photos in this chapter.
Layout User Interface with Stacks
You may construct complex user interfaces for your apps by layering views horizontally and vertically. Auto layout is vital for UIKit since it creates interfaces for all screen sizes. The auto layout might be challenging for beginners. SwiftUI no longer needs auto layout. SwiftUI stacks are comparable to UIKit stack views. Stacks include VStack, HStack, and ZStack.
In this chapter, I’ll describe stacks and grids. What project will you work on? Have a look at the Image below. Basic grid interfaces will be built incrementally. After reading this chapter, you may construct the Interface you want by combining views and stacks.
Basic Animations and Transitions
Have you ever utilized Keynote’s magic move animation? Magic motion smooths slips. Keynote automatically evaluates and animates things between presentations. SwiftUI has made app development magic. SwiftUI animates transitions between two view states you define. The Framework enables automatic and magical animations.
SwiftUI allows you to animate views and transitions. The Framework has various built-in animations. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to animate views using SwiftUI’s implicit and explicit animations. You must work on a few sample projects to understand the programming method.
Working with Navigation UI & Bar Customization
Most applications, particularly content-based ones, feature a navigational interface. This kind of UI contains a navigation bar with data and lets users tap content to read details. Apple calls SwiftUI Navigation View. UIKit’s UI Navigation Controller may implement this Interface. I’ll guide you through navigation UI implementation and modification in this chapter. As usual, we’ll work on two sample projects to familiarise you with NavigationView.
Data Sharing with Combine and Environment Objects
You learnt how to design a form using the Form component in the previous chapter. The form still needs to be fixed. No matter what you pick, the list display doesn’t alter. It is what we’ll discuss and apply in this chapter. We will continue to enhance the configuration screen and make the app completely functional by updating the restaurant list to the user’s desire.
Other parts will cover the following topics:
- How to use an enum to arrange our code
- How to use UserDefaults to save user preferences permanently
- How to transfer data with Combine and @EnvironmentObject
Gestures and Animations for a Tinder-like User Interface
Wasn’t it great to construct an extensible bottom sheet? Let’s apply what we learnt about gestures to a real-world project. Have you tried Tinder? Yet you’ve seen a Tinder-like UI in other applications. The swiping action is key to Tinder’s UI design and is a prominent mobile UI trend.
Integrating UIKit with SwiftUI Using UIViewRepresentable
In the previous chapter, we answered a common question about Core Data and SwiftUI. Another common question is how to work with UIKit views in SwiftUI projects. You will learn this technique by incorporating a UISearchBar into the Todo app in this chapter.
Using the UISearchBar component in UIKit is one way to add a search bar to a SwiftUI project (like our ToDo app). If you’re new to UIKit, UISearchBar is a built-in component that lets developers present a search bar for data.
Conclusion:
Making software compatible with all Apple devices and operating systems, including macOS, has always been more complex. It used to be difficult to create programs on macOS. Thanks to SwiftUI that is no longer the case. Regardless of your target platform, the building blocks you utilize to create your app’s user experience remain the same. SwiftUI ensures the user interface is visually appealing and responsive across all platforms. With more than a billion iOS devices in use, this creates a huge potential for app creators. Join Today in Our iOS Training Course at Nschool Academies.
