You’ve learned enough iOS development to build a master-detail app, and you can build table views without much trouble. But where do you go if you want to add in-app purchase to your app? How do you find the code you need to add maps, or Apple Pay, or HealthKit to your app?
You could search with Google (DuckDuckGo?) or Stack Overflow, but sometimes it’s hard to know which sites and answers to trust. This is a collection of my most trusted places to learn how to accomplish specific iOS development tasks.
Tutorials and Documentation
Apple’s Developer Resources page is the place to start. There are links to documentation, videos, and sample code for all of their platforms, tools, and technologies, from iOS to watchOS to Swift and Xcode, Apple Pay, Metal, HealthKit, MapKit, and more. If you want to do something specific in iOS, this is a great place to learn. (Be sure to try the search, too, if you don’t find what you’re looking for on the resources page.)
If Apple’s resources aren’t sufficient, the next place to look is Ray Wenderlich. They’ve amassed a huge number of written tutorials on iOS development, so if you’re trying to learn how to use a particular framework or technology that doesn’t show up in Apple’s resources, you can probably find a tutorial for it on Ray Wenderlich. They’ve recently added video tutorials, too, so you can look through those if you prefer to learn that way.
NSScreencast offers “weekly bite-sized screencasts on iOS development.” They’re high quality and laser focused on specific topics, so you can quickly learn how to do very specific things in iOS, like testing with Quick or formatting dates. With NSScreencast, it’s quality over quantity – the videos are amazing, even if there isn’t one for every single topic under the sun. If you’re looking for videos – especially about technologies that Apple doesn’t cover, like third-party frameworks – NSScreencast is the place to go. They’re better than anything else out there.
Sample Code
Apple’s sample code is another great place to look if you’re just looking for some code that shows how to do something. You can browse or search to find what you’re looking for.
Don’t stop there…
Finding the sample code and resources you need to add new functionality to your apps is just the first step. Make sure you keep learning new things, too, so you can continue to improve as an iOS developer. Get my weekly articles designed to make you a better iOS developer by dropping your name and email in the boxes below.