Book Image

Learning Xcode 8

By : Jak Tiano
Book Image

Learning Xcode 8

By: Jak Tiano

Overview of this book

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a breakthrough in mobile computing and the birth of world-changing mobile apps. With a reputation as one of the most user-centric and developer-friendly platforms, iOS is the best place to launch your next great app idea. As the official tool to create iOS applications, Xcode is chock full of features aimed at making a developer’s job easier, faster, and more fun. This book will take you from complete novice to a published app developer, and covers every step in between. You’ll learn the basics of iOS application development by taking a guided tour through the Xcode software and Swift programming language, before putting that knowledge to use by building your first app called “Snippets.” Over the course of the book, you will continue to explore the many facets of iOS development in Xcode by adding new features to your app, integrating gestures and sensors, and even creating an Apple Watch companion app. You’ll also learn how to use the debugging tools, write unit tests, and optimize and distribute your app. By the time you make it to the end of this book, you will have successfully built and published your first iOS application.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Learning Xcode 8
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Understanding UIKit fundamentals


At this point in the book, we've heard a lot about UIKit. We've seen it at the top of our Swift files in the form of import UIKit. We've used many of the UI elements and classes it provides for us. Now it's time to take an isolated look at the biggest and most important framework in iOS development.

In this section we're going to be talking about mostly concepts rather than concrete code examples. Since we've been using UIKit throughout the whole book (and will continue to do so), I'm going to do my best to elaborate on some things we've already seen, and give you new information that you can apply to what we do in the future.

Application management

Unlike most other frameworks in the iOS SDK, UIKit is deeply integrated into the way your app runs. That's because UIKit is responsible for some of the most essential functionalities of an app.

It provides the event handling for user input (like touch and gestures), which we covered in depth in the last chapter. It...