Cut your Swift build times in half with this one weird trick

(I’m not apologizing for the clickbaity title since it actually works and it is a little weird…) I’ve been working on improving Swift build times off and on for the past few weeks, and today I stumbled across the best possible improvement: a one-line change that cut our build times in half. I noticed in our build logs that all …

Testing asynchronous code in Swift with XCTest expectations

Testing asynchronous callbacks in your Swift code? Try this: let expectation = expectationWithDescription(“Get some sandwiches!”) let client = SandwichClient() client.getSandwiches { result in switch result { case .Success: expectation.fulfill() // ? case .Failure: XCTFail(“Expected getSandwiches to succeed, but it failed. ?”) } } waitForExpectationsWithTimeout(10, handler: nil) Consider using OHHTTPStubs or just stubbing manually to make this run faster. (Note that …

WWDC 2016 podcast episodes for iOS developers

I enjoy listening to podcasts when I commute, and I especially love hearing different people’s thoughts, opinions, and recommendations on what to do as a result of the new announcements at WWDC. Here are some of the WWDC 2016 podcast episodes I’ve enjoyed, followed by a few that are still on my list. If you’re looking something to listen to …

Key takeaways for iOS developers from the WWDC 2016 Keynote

As a busy iOS developer, it’s hard to find time to sit down and watch a two-hour keynote, even if it is relevant and important. Here’s a summary of what Apple announced in the WWDC 2016 Keynote as it relates to iOS developers. This covers only what’s relevant to you as an iOS developer; it doesn’t cover watchOS 3, macOS …

Navigating Apple’s WWDC from home

Not going to WWDC? Here’s what you can do next week to keep up with all the important new announcements — even if you can’t take the entire week off to watch the videos from home… ‘cuz let’s face it — we’re all too busy for that. Most importantly, you want to pay attention to the Keynote and the Platforms …

How do you unit test REST calls in Swift?

In the Live Q&A chat Christina and I hosted a few weeks ago on GrokSwift.com, Steve asked about the best way to unit test REST API calls. Here’s his question: Can you talk about the right way to unit test rest calls? What are the best tools for just testing endpoints? I love this question — probably because I love …

Recipe: Using Anchors to Place Views in iOS

I just learned anchors for placing views in iOS, and they totally blew my mind. If you’re setting any auto layout constraints programmatically with NSLayoutConstraint’s constraintWithItem:attribute:relatedBy:toItem:attribute:multiplier:constant:, you know how ugly and verbose it can be –​ and you definitely want to check out anchors. Want to center your segmented control horizontally 20 points from the top of the view? Forget …

Avoid using class names in Swift’s #selector

Don’t use class names in Swift 2.2’s new #selector. In other words, don’t do this: button.addTarget(self, action: #selector(MyViewController.showLoginView), forControlEvents: .TouchUpInside) Here’s the problem: it compiles, so you’d expect it to work, right? Isn’t that what #selector is all about? But let’s say you decided to refactor this code out of MyViewController and into a child view controller called MySecondViewController. (This …

Tiny Swift Tip: Initializing Empty Arrays

If you’re initializing your empty arrays by specifying the type annotation like this… Hold on — what’s a type annotation? Great question. You use them all the time when you define methods that have at least one parameter: func fetchBookByID(id: Int) // … The : Int is the type annotation for the id parameter. A type annotation starts with a …