Xcode

Nov

The excellent playground feature in Xcode 6 provides a great way to create interactive programming examples, but unfortunately only works with Swift.

Here’s a library submitted by Krzysztof Zablocki providing an extensive feature set for creating Playgrounds in Objective-C called KZPlayground.

Some of the features of KZPlayground as stated in the readme include:

Faster than Swift playgrounds (a lot)
Extra controls for tweaking:
- values
- images
Auto-animated values
Synchronizing DSL’s
Buttons
IDE agnostic, once you run it, you can modify the code even from vim.
Full iOS simulator and access to all iOS features, so you can prototype production ready code.
Nice DSL for rapid prototyping
CocoaPods support, so you can add it to existing projects to experiment
Open source, anyone can contribute to make them better!

An example project is included.

Nov

Here’s an open source release submitted by Krzysztof Zablocki that provides a project bootstrap for high quality coding called KZBootstrap.

KZBootstrap provides a nice labled icon setup making it easy to distinguish between build types, extra scripts for more warnings such as for todo’s and warnings when files get big. easy setup of environments within a plist file using Xcodebuild or Jenkins, clickable links within logging using CocoaLumberjack, extra conveniences for easier debugging, and more.

Oct

xcres searches your Xcode project for resources and generates an index as struct constants. So you will never have to reference a resource, without knowing already at compile time if it exists or not.

It includes loose images, .bundles, asset catalogs (.xcasset) and even .strings in the index.

It gives you code autocompletion for resources and localized string keys, without the need of an Xcode plugin.

Sep

Here’s nice tutorial from Yari that explains how to use the new feature in iOS 6’s interface builder that allows you to preview and update your custom components.

The key to using this new feature are the IBDesignable and IBInspectable keywords, and in order to get things working you’ll need to implement your custom component within a framework.

In the tutorial Yari covers each step in creating a simple custom component that can be viewed, and adjusted directly within interface builder.

Sep

The tutorials explain many aspects of Swift, Xcode 6, and the basics of new APIs such as HealthKit and UIVisualEffects, and the source code has been updated to work with the latest iOS 8 SDK releases.

Some of the topics covered in the tutorials include:

A quick Swift beginners guide
Xcode 6 Playground Basics
Using HealthKit
Creating sharing extensions
Creating Photo editing extensions
Setting up a XIB as a launch screen

Sep

A short cheat-sheet with Xcode 6 Playground

Available on GitHub

Sep

Sean McCune of the Big Nerd Ranch on testing asynchronous code in Xcode 6:

If we have a test that has to kick off an asynchronous task, whether it runs in another thread or in the main thread’s runloop, how do we test it?

Good news is:

With Xcode 6, Apple has added test expectations to the XCTest framework in the form of the XCTestExpectation class. When we instantiate a test expectation, the testing framework expects that it will be fulfilled at some point in the future.

Sep

MALoggingViewController is a real-time pseudo-console you can embed in your application, perfect for testing and debugging in the real world.

No more driving around town with the Xcode console open, or having to handle logging to files and emailing them later to figure out what the heck happened – you can see all the data on your device, anywhere, in real time.

Aug

MCLog plugin adds a search box to the bottom right hand corner of the Xcode debug console, and can even handle regular expressions. The filtering works on the console output in real time which is very nice when you have a lot of unwanted statements coming out.

Here is an animation from the readme showing MCLog in action:

Aug

Here’s a project that providing an Xcode 6 playground with examples of a number patterns that you can use within your own projects, or just for learning called Design-Patterns-In-Swift from Oktawian Chojnacki.

Some of the design patterns included are:

Singleton
Builder
Abstract Factory
Prototype
Facade
Strategy

Software Engineer, iOS Developer, Scrum Master

Open Source Library For Creating Objective-C Playgrounds

KZBootstrap – iOS Project Bootstrap For High Quality Coding

xcres – assets manager for iOS projects

Tutorial: Creating Custom Components That Can Be Previewed And Modified In Xcode 6

Collection Of New iOS 8 SDK Features Tutorials

Design Patterns In Swift

Asynchronous Testing With Xcode 6

MALoggingViewController for iOS

Xcode Plugin That Adds Filtering To The Debug Console

An example of popular design patterns implemented in Swift