In the recent WWDC19 apple introduced a new and very modern approach of building UIs in the apple ecosystem which could drastically change the way in which UI development is done in both iOS and macOS along with tvOS and watchOS and the new iPadOS!.Together with the Project Catalyst(Marzipan),which helps in porting iPad applications to macOS applications with little effort,SwiftUI is really a game changer.
It could make creating UI in apple ecosystem a lot more easier, structural and declarative. It introduced a new View Protocol which helps in implementing new controls or components. The new approach adopts protocol oriented programming and value semantics which is the most recommended way of data and state management by apple engineers.Now all your view are value types and thus state management becomes a lot more easier.Basically SwiftUI embraces the React and Flutter way of creating UIs and is a good sign of apple trying to create a better platform for developers and being in sync all other general developments in the industry.
Practically speaking SwiftUI makes the UI code of your application significantly smaller ,interactive and fun to develop. It also brings the storyboard vs programmatically create UI debate to an end.I t might also make the UIKit(iOS),AppKit(macOS),UIKit for mac(introduced for supporting Project Catalyst) obsolete in the near future.But in the short term SwiftUI won’t completely replace legacy methods since it supports only from iOS 13 and latest macOS 10.15.
The possibilities and advantages of SwiftUI is really astounding as I have seen a lot of wide application ideas from the iOS community within the short term SwiftUI was announced. It includes
- Faster development of UI , smaller,more structured, readable,easy to use UI code.
- Better animations,which are easy to implement
- Better coupling of animations
- Animations can automatically sync up with gestures which makes UI more fluid
- Reuse of same code across multiple apple platforms
- Custom compenents are easier to create and reuse and share among developers.
- Also the underlying platform of SwiftUI :DSL(Domain specific languages) opens up a lot of possibilities ,I have seen libraries which could use swift to generate html code etc
- Another interesting idea,I had seen was network based UI code,which is a very huge possibility and maybe controversial at it maybe can bypass apple review.
- Previews in Xcode,which brings together stroryboard like approach and code based approach,brings an interactive and real time visual two base binding between code and UI preview.
Where to and How to
SwiftUI is a drastic change from the conventional method. So learning and adopting the new standard can be challenging as it introduces new system of designing and declaring and also brings in new concepts which are unfamiliar in apple ecosystem.
1 ) Apple’s Own Tutorials
https://developer.apple.com/tutorials/swiftui/creating-and-combining-views
The apple team had done a very tremendous work by introducing SwiftUI.But it took a step further and introduced its own interactive tutorials and playgrounds for swiftUI.Its the first I have seen in the apple ecosystem.Earlier we had to depend on the documentation or the community’s help to adopt a new apple framework.This had the disadvantage of developers using the framework in the wrong way and also no clarity on the standard best practices and do’s and dont’s. Though interactive platforms own tutorials was very common with javascript frameworks(angular,react,react native etc),flutter etc it was absent in apple ecosystem.But apple introduced it we could notice that it immediately is the best live tutorial out there.
2 ) WWDC Videos
WWDC videos are must watch videos for gaining insightful knowledge about an apple framework
3 ) Raywenderlich They have always provide good quality and updated contents.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/3715234-swiftui-getting-started SwiftUI: Getting Started | raywenderlich.com
4 ) Hacking With Swift by Paul Hudson
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/196/learn-swiftui-with-free-tutorials
He came up with a complete tutorial and practical code on SwiftUI on the second day SwiftUI was introduced.That was truly marvellous.(I later came to know many other people in the community was that fast to learning and adopting SwiftUI).
5 ) SwiftUI Tutorials by Lets Build That App
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuP2vJ6kRutQBfRmdcI92mA/
This guy provides a good youtube channel which I follow and also a very good site which instructs how to develop common and popular apps.
6 ) SwiftUI by John Sundell
https://www.swiftbysundell.com/
Another great contributor who I follow.He also came up with tutorials really fast.
7 ) Other Collections:Awesome SwiftUI on GitHub https://github.com/ygit/swiftui