Professional Swift
Course Description Overview
This course takes you into the world of Swift – an open source multi-paradigm language that has a clean syntax, is easy to maintain, and encourages interactive coding. You will start by learning the concepts of value types, JSON encoding and decoding, and the software architecture of Swift and frameworks. You will then learn about protocols, generics, and how to transition to protocol-oriented programming. You will also learn and evaluate the iOS architectural patterns in detail. By the end of this course, you will confidently create applications by using Swift features.
Speed and easy maintenance are key factors that affect the performance and popularity of applications. This course teaches you how to use the features of Swift to create superlative applications.
We begin the course by learning about value types (structs and enums), and when they are preferable over classes. We also learn about the copy-on-write technique and how to implement it ourselves. Then we learn how to load JSON from web APIs into our custom types, and how to export that content out again. Finally we learn how to create frameworks, and import other frameworks using CocoaPods or Carthage.
We move on to learn advanced uses of Swift protocols and how protocol-oriented development improves efficiency and leads to more maintainable and reusable code. Then we learn about generics, and how they enable us to support multiple types without duplication. Later in the course, we discover different ways to structure a complete iOS app from scratch. We begin the discussion with the well-known MVC pattern and cover every other trending architecture in the iOS world.
After completing this course, you will be able to:
- Load content from web APIs into structs
- Use methods to store structs to files
- Implement the copy-on-write technique
- Describe protocols and protocol-oriented programming in depth
- Write code with less duplication using generics
- Evaluate different architectural patterns for iOS apps
- Create an iOS app using Redux.
This is an ideal course for you, if you want to improve your Swift skills and move into the professional app development world. You will benefit the most from this course, if you already know the following concepts of Swift:
- Basic syntax
- Optionals
- Functions and closures
- Classes
It is assumed that you are familiar with Xcode. Any additional iOS application development experience, either using Swift or Objective-C, will be an advantage for you.
- Operating system: macOS Sierra 10.12.6+
- Xcode 9
- Safari browser
For an optimal experience with the hands-on labs and other practical activities, we recommend the following hardware configuration:
A Mac computer capable of running macOS Sierra 10.12, such as:
- MacBook (Late 2009 or newer)
- MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)
- MacBook Air (Late 2010 or newer)
- Mac mini (Mid 2010 or newer)
- iMac (Late 2009 or newer)
- Mac Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)
LESSON 1: VALUE TYPES
- Reference versus Value Types
- Structs
- Enums
LESSON 2: ENCODING AND DECODING
- JSON Decoding
- JSON Encoding
LESSON 3: SWIFT FRAMEWORKS
- Creating a framework
- CocoaPods
- Carthage
LESSON 4: SWIFT PROTOCOLS
- Protocol Syntax Basics
- Using Protocols as Types
- Mutating Method Requirements
LESSON 5: TRANSITIONING TO PROTOCOL-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
- Comparing Object-Oriented and Protocol-Oriented Programming
- Implement Employee as a Simple Swift Struct
- Refactoring Employee with an Object-Oriented Approach
- Refactoring Employee with a Protocol-Oriented Approach
LESSON 6: GENERICS
- Basics of Generics
- Creating Generic Types
- Generic Extensions
- Associated Types
LESSON 7: SOFTWARE DESIGN
- The Need for Architectural Patterns
- The Original MVC Report
- Apple’s MVC
LESSON 8: MVC ALTERNATIVES
- Apple’s MVC in Practice
- MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel)
- VIPER
LESSON 9: UNIDIRECTIONAL DATA FLOW
- Identifying Side Effects of Functions
- Unidirectional Data Flow
- Redux in iOS