Beginning iPhone Development with Swift: Exploring the iOS SDK

The team that brought you the bestselling Beginning iPhone Development, the book that taught the world how to program on the iPhone, is back again for Beginning iPhone Development with Swift.This definitive guide is up to date with Apple’s new Swift programming language and the latest and greatest iOS 8 SDK, and Xcode 6.1.

There’s coverage of brand-new technologies, including Swift playgrounds, as well as significant updates to existing material. You’ll have everything you need to create your very own apps for the latest iOS devices. Every single sample app in the book has been rebuilt from scratch using the latest Xcode and the latest 64-bit iOS 8-specific project templates, and designed to take advantage of the latest Xcode features.

Assuming little or no working knowledge of the new Swift programming language, and written in a friendly, easy-to-follow style, this book offers a complete soup-to-nuts course in iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch programming. The book starts with the basics, walking through the process of downloading and installing Xcode 6.1 and the iOS 8 SDK, and then guides you though the creation of your first simple application.

From there, you’ll learn how to integrate all the interface elements iOS users have come to know and love, such as buttons, switches, pickers, toolbars, and sliders. You’ll master a variety of design patterns, from the simplest single view to complex hierarchical drill-downs. The art of table building will be demystified, and you’ll learn how to save your data using the iPhone file system. You’ll also learn how to save and retrieve your data using a variety of persistence techniques, including Core Data and SQLite. And there’s much more!

What you’ll learn

• Everything you need to know to develop your own bestselling iPhone and iPad apps
• Utilizing Swift playgrounds
• Best practices for optimizing your code and delivering great user experiences
• What data persistence is, and why it’s important
• Get started with building cool, crisp user interfaces
• How to display data in Table Views
• How to draw to the screen using Core Graphics
• How to use iOS sensor capabilities to map your world
• How to get your app to work with iCloud and more

Who this book is for

This book is for aspiring iPhone app developers, new to the Apple Swift programming language and/or the iOS SDK.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Welcome to the Swift Jungle
Chapter 2. Appeasing the Tiki Gods
Chapter 3. Handling Basic Interaction
Chapter 4. More User Interface Fun
Chapter 5. Rotation and Adaptive Layout
Chapter 6. Multiview Applications
Chapter 7. Tab Bars and Pickers
Chapter 8. Introduction to Table Views
Chapter 9. Navigation Controllers and Table Views
Chapter 10. Collection Views
Chapter 11. iPad Considerations
Chapter 12. Application Settings and User Defaults
Chapter 13. Basic Data Persistence
Chapter 14. Hey! You! Get onto iCloud!
Chapter 15. Grand Central Dispatch, Background Processing, and You
Chapter 16. Core Graphics: Drawing with Quartz
Chapter 17. Getting Started with Sprite Kit
Chapter 18. Taps, Touches, and Gestures
Chapter 19. Where Am I? Finding Your Way with Core Location and Map Kit
Chapter 20. Whee! Gyro and Accelerometer!
Chapter 21. The Camera and Photo Library
Chapter 22. Application Localization

Appendix: A Swift Introduction to Swift