Supports Xcode 6.

A Practical Guide to Building Your First App from Scratch

Beginning

iOS 8 Programming
with Swift
SIMON NG

APPCODA

Copyright 2015 AppCoda Limited

All rights reserved. Please do not distribute or share without permission. No part of this
book or corresponding materials (such as images or source code) may be distributed by
any means without prior written permission of the author.
All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing in this book are the property of their
respective owners.
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Swift Playgrounds

In this years Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple surprised all iOS developers by
launching a new programming language called Swift. Swift is advertised as a fast,
modern, safe, interactive programming language. The language is easier to learn and
comes with features to make programming more productive.
Prior to the announcement of Swift, iOS apps were primarily written in Objective-C. The
language has been around for more than 20 years and was chosen by Apple as the
primary programming language for Mac and iOS development. Ive talked to many
aspiring iOS developers. A majority of them said Objective-C was hard to learn and its
syntax looked weird. Simply put, the code scares some beginners o from learning iOS
programming.

The release of Swift programming language is probably Apples answer to some of these
comments. The syntax is much cleaner and easier to read. I have been programming in
Swift since its beta release. I can say you're almost guaranteed to be more productive
using Swift. It definitely speeds up the development process. Once you get used to Swift
programming, it would be hard for you to switch back to Objective-C.
It seems to me that Swift will lure more web developers to build apps. If youre a web
developer with some programming experience on any scripting languages, you can
leverage your existing expertise to gain knowledge on developing on iOS. It would be fairly
easy for you to pick up Swift. That said, even if youre a total beginner with no prior
programming experience, youll also find the language friendlier and feel more comfortable
to develop apps in Swift.
To get a taste of Swift programming language, lets take a look at the following code
snippets.
Objective-C
const int count = 10;
double price = 23.55;
NSString *firstMessage = @"Swift is awesome. ";
NSString *secondMessage = @"What do you think?";
NSString *message = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", firstMessage, secondMessage];
NSLog(@"%@", message);

Swift
let count = 10
var price = 23.55
let firstMessage = "Swift is awesome. "
let secondMessage= "What do you think?"
var message = firstMessage + secondMessage
println(message)

The first block of code is written in Objective-C, while the second one is written in Swift.
Which language do you prefer? I guess you would prefer to programming in Swift,
especially if youre frustrated with the Objective-C syntax.

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Constants and variables are two basic elements in programming. In the Objective-C world,
its your responsibility to specify the type information when declaring a variable or a
constant, be it an integer or a string. For Swift, it introduces a new feature called Type
Inference. You no longer need to annotate variables/constants with type information. All
you need to do is to use let to declare a constant and var to declare a variable. Swift is
intelligent enough to deduce the type by examining the values you provide.
Another dierence that you may notice is the omission of the semi-colon. In Objective-C,
you have to end each statement with a semicolon. If you forget to do so, you will end up
with an error. I know many Objective-C beginners have experienced this error before. Swift
should make your developers life easier.
Swift has added many powerful features to streamline your coding. As you can see from
the above example, string manipulation is much simpler. In Objective-C, you have to
choose between NSString and NSMutableString classes to indicate whether the string can
be modified. You do not need to make such choice in Swift. Whenever you assign a string
as variable (i.e. var), the string can be modified in your code. Concatenating strings is
super easy. Just use the + operator to combine two strings. Further, Swift allows you to
compare strings directly using the == operator.
There is no better way to explore coding than actually writing code. Xcode 6 introduces a
new feature called Playgrounds. Its an interactive development environment for
developers to experiment Swift programming and allows you to see the result of your code
in real-time. Assuming youve installed Xcode 6 (or up), launch the application (by clicking
the Xcode icon in Launchpad). Youll see a startup dialog.

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Playground is a special type of Xcode file. You can simply click Get started with a
playground to get started. Youll then be prompted to fill in a project name and select a
platform.

Use the default name or your own name but remember to select iOS as the platform.
Once you confirm to save the file, Xcode opens the Playground interface. Your screen
should like this:

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On the left pane of the screen, it is the editor area where you type your code. As you write
your code, Playground immediately interprets your code and displays the result on the
right pane. By default, Playground includes two lines of code. As you can see, the result of
the str declaration appears immediately on the right pane.
Well write some code in Playground together. Remember the purpose of this exercise is to
let you experience Swift programming and get a better idea of Xcode 6. Ill try to explain
part of the code as we move along. However, even if you do not understand any line of the
code, that is completely fine especially youre a new comer. Im quite sure youll be
confused by some of the terms like class, method. Forget about their meanings, just relax
and play around with Xcode. Well go over them again in later chapters.
Cool! Lets get started.
First, key in a couple lines of code. Here we declare two more variables:
var message1 = "Hello Swift! How can I get started?"
var message2 = "The best way to get started is to stop talking and code."

As soon as you insert the above lines of code, you will see the result on the right pane.

Lets continue to add the following line of code:

message1.uppercaseString

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Xcodes editor comes with an auto-complete feature. Auto-complete is a very handy

feature to speed up your coding. Once you type mess, youll see an auto-complete
window showing some suggestions based on what you have keyed in. All you need to do
is to select message1 and hit enter.

Swift employs the dot syntax for calling methods and accessing the properties of a
variable. As you type the dot after message1, the auto-complete window pops out again.
It suggests a list of methods and properties belonged to the variable. You can continue to
type uppercaseString or select it from the auto-complete window.

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Once you complete your typing, you would see the output immediately. When we use the
uppercaseString property, the content of message1 is converted to upper case
automatically.
Continue to type the following line of code:
message2.lowercaseString + " Okay, I'm working on it "

Swift allows you to concatenate two strings with the + operator. The line of code converts
the content of message2 into lower case and then concatenated with another string.
Interestingly, you can include emoji characters in your code. You may wonder how to type
emoji characters in Mac OS. Its easy. Just press control-command-spacebar and an
emoji picker will be displayed.
Lets continue to type the following code snippet:
if message1 == message2 {
println("Same message")
} else {
println("Not the same message")
}

Conditional logic is very common in programming. Sometimes, you want to execute

certain part of code only when a certain condition is met. An if-else statement is one of the
ways in Swift to control program flow. Here we compare the content of message1 and
message2 variables using the == operator. If theyre equal, the program prints Same
message. Otherwise, it prints Not the same message. You should see the following
result on your screen.

Lets have some more fun and create a label, which is a common user interface element:

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let messageLabel = UILabel(frame: CGRectMake(0, 0, 300, 50))

messageLabel.text = message1
messageLabel

Here we use a built-in UILabel class to create a label and set its size to 300x50 points. We
then set its text to message1. To preview a UI element in Playground, you can click the
Quick Look or Value History icon. The Quick Look feature displays the label as a pop-over.
If you use the Value History feature, Playground opens a separate preview pane.

Its just a plain label. Wouldnt be great if you can change its color? Even better, you just
need one line of code to customize the color. Whats more you can easily center the text
and change the label to round corner. Type the following lines and youll see a rounded
corner label with orange background.
messageLabel.backgroundColor = UIColor.orangeColor()
messageLabel.textAlignment = NSTextAlignment.Center
messageLabel.layer.cornerRadius = 10.0
messageLabel.clipsToBounds = true
messageLabel

This is the power of iOS SDK. It comes with tons of pre-built elements and allows
developers to customize them with few lines of code.

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Dont get me wrong. Typically you do not need to write code to create the user interface.
Xcode provides a Storyboard feature that lets you design UI using drag-and-drop. Well go
through in the next chapter.
So youve got a taste of Swift? What do you think? Love it? I hope you find Swift a lot
easier to learn and code. Most importantly, I hope it dont scare you away from learning
app development. Next up, youll learn how to build your first app.
For your reference, you can download the Playground file from https://www.dropbox.com/
s/y9plgddbsjauhqq/MyPlayground.zip?dl=0.

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