Book Image

Learning Swift Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Andrew J Wagner
Book Image

Learning Swift Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Andrew J Wagner

Overview of this book

Swift is Apple’s new programming language and the future of iOS and OS X app development. It is a high-performance language that feels like a modern scripting language. On the surface, Swift is easy to jump into, but it has complex underpinnings that are critical to becoming proficient at turning an idea into reality. This book is an approachable, step-by-step introduction into programming with Swift for everyone. It begins by giving you an overview of the key features through practical examples and progresses to more advanced topics that help differentiate the proficient developers from the mediocre ones. It covers important concepts such as Variables, Optionals, Closures, Generics, and Memory Management. Mixed in with those concepts, it also helps you learn the art of programming such as maintainability, useful design patterns, and resources to further your knowledge. This all culminates in writing a basic iOS app that will get you well on your way to turning your own app ideas into reality.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Learning Swift Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Calling Objective-C code from Swift


The last and possibly the most critical component of understanding Objective-C for our purpose is to be able to call Objective-C code from Swift. This is actually pretty straightforward in most circumstances. We will not take any time to discuss calling Swift code from Objective-C because this book assumes that you are only writing Swift code.

Bridging header

The most important part of being able to call Objective-C code from Swift is how to make the code visible to Swift. As we now know, Objective-C code needs to be imported to be visible to other code. This still holds true with Swift, but Swift has no mechanism to import individual files. Instead, when you add your first Objective-C code to a Swift project, Xcode is going to ask you if you want to add what is called a bridging header:

You should select Yes and then Xcode will automatically create a header file named after the project ending in Bridging-Header.h. This is the file where you need to import...