Making real-world app with SwiftUI

That is WWDC week: everybody is so excited about so many new things like SwiftUI, Dark Mode, updateable Core ML models, etc. I will try to cover all the new stuff during the upcoming weeks. Let’s start with SwiftUI. SwiftUI is an entirely new approach to building apps for the Apple ecosystem.

SwiftUI is a declarative Component-Oriented framework. You have to forget about MVC where you have controllers mediating between view and model. All we have in SwiftUI is a state and view derived from the state. As soon as your state changes SwiftUI rebuild UI for that state changes. Apple team did an excellent job by providing so beautiful tutorial page for SwiftUI. It covers a lot of stuff like Layout, Interfacing with UIKit, etc.

I will try to show you real-world app example written entirely in SwiftUI. Let’s build an app searching for Github repos. We need a screen with a text field for typing a query and a list of repos which comes from the search query. I assume that you have already read the SwiftUI documentation because I’m not going to describe basics, I will try to show something that documentation didn’t covers.

Let’s start by building the GithubService class, which creates a search request and Repo struct, which represents a Github repository.

struct Repo : Decodable , Identifiable { var id : Int let name : String let description : String } struct SearchResponse : Decodable { let items : [ Repo ] } class GithubService { private let session : URLSession private let decoder : JSONDecoder init ( session : URLSession = . shared , decoder : JSONDecoder = . init ()) { self . session = session self . decoder = decoder } func search ( matching query : String , handler : @escaping ( Result < [ Repo ], Error > ) -> Void ) { guard var urlComponents = URLComponents ( string : "https://api.github.com/search/repositories" ) else { preconditionFailure ( "Can't create url components..." ) } urlComponents . queryItems = [ URLQueryItem ( name : "q" , value : query ) ] guard let url = urlComponents . url else { preconditionFailure ( "Can't create url from url components..." ) } session . dataTask ( with : url ) { [ weak self ] data , _ , error in if let error = error { handler ( . failure ( error )) } else { do { let data = data ?? Data () let response = try self ? . decoder . decode ( SearchResponse . self , from : data ) handler ( . success ( response ? . items ?? [])) } catch { handler ( . failure ( error )) } } } . resume () } }

Our Repo struct has only a few fields, but it is enough for our sample. If we want to use our Repo struct as the model which should be used by SwiftUI to build a View it has to conform to Identifiable protocol. The only requirement of Identifiable protocol is id property, which has to be a Hashable value.

Now we can start implementing view which represents Repo row in our list of repos. We will use a vertical stack with two text labels.

struct RepoRow : View { let repo : Repo var body : some View { VStack ( alignment : . leading ) { Text ( repo . name ) . font ( . headline ) Text ( repo . description ) . font ( . subheadline ) } } }

Let’s move to our SearchView which describes entire the screen.

struct SearchView : View { @State private var query : String = "Swift" @EnvironmentObject var repoStore : ReposStore var body : some View { NavigationView { List { TextField ( "Type something..." , text : $ query , onCommit : fetch ) ForEach ( repoStore . repos ) { repo in RepoRow ( repo : repo ) } } . navigationBarTitle ( Text ( "Search" )) } . onAppear ( perform : fetch ) } private func fetch () { repoStore . fetch ( matching : query ) } }

Here we have a query field which is marked as @State. It means that this view is derived from this state, and as soon as state changes, SwiftUI rebuilds the view. SwiftUI uses diffing algorithm to understand changes and update only corresponding views. SwiftUI stores all the fields marked as @State in special separated memory, where only corresponded view can access and update them. @State is a new Swift feature called Property Wrapper, more about this feature you can read in the proposal. The exciting aspect is the usage of $query, It means to get a reference for property wrapper, not value itself. We use it to connect TextField and query variable in two way binding.

Another interesting fact here is @EnvironmentObject. It is a part of feature called Environment. You can populate your Environment with all needed service classes and then access them from any view inside that Environment. The Environment is the right way of Dependency Injection with SwiftUI.

import Foundation import Combine final class ReposStore : ObservableObject { @Published private(set) var repos : [ Repo ] = [] private let service : GithubService init ( service : GithubService ) { self . service = service } func fetch ( matching query : String ) { service . search ( matching : query ) { [ weak self ] result in DispatchQueue . main . async { switch result { case . success ( let repos ): self ? . repos = repos case . failure : self ? . repos = [] } } } } }

ReposStore class should conform ObservableObject protocol. It makes possible to use it inside Environment and rebuild view as soon as any property marked as @Published changes.

The main difference between @State and @EnvironmentObject is that @State is accessible only to a particular view, in opposite @EnvironmentObject available for every view inside the Environment. But both of them used by SwiftUI to track changes and rebuild views as soon as changes appear.

class SceneDelegate : UIResponder , UIWindowSceneDelegate { var window : UIWindow ? func scene ( _ scene : UIScene , willConnectTo session : UISceneSession , options connectionOptions : UIScene . ConnectionOptions ) { let window = UIWindow ( frame : UIScreen . main . bounds ) let store = ReposStore ( service : . init ()) window . rootViewController = UIHostingController ( rootView : SearchView () . environmentObject ( store ) ) self . window = window window . makeKeyAndVisible () } }

And this is how we can start our SwiftUI app with defined Environment.

Conclusion

This week we talked about an entirely new approach in the iOS development world. I will try to cover more WWDC topics in the upcoming weeks. Feel free to follow me on Twitter and ask your questions related to this post. Thanks for reading and see you next week!