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Loading URL previews using LinkPresentation framework in Swift

iOS and macOS got a new framework in WWDC'19 named LinkPresentation. LinkPresentation enables fetching URL previews. Adding LPLinkView for presenting preview LPLinkView is a view subclass meant for rendering LPLinkMetadata. LPLinkMetadata contains information about the link: title, icon, image, video. https://gist.github.com/laevandus/62c9d1d2987652cb0af149aaa4f38985 Adding LPLinkView to stack view Fetching previews with LPMetadataProvider Instances of LPLinkMetadata are fetched …

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Animating GIFs and APNGs with CGAnimateImageAtURLWithBlock in SwiftUI

This year Apple added CGAnimateImageAtURLWithBlock and CGAnimateImageDataWithBlock for animating GIFs and APNGs on all the platforms to the ImageIO framework. We can pass in URL or data and get callbacks when animation changes the current frame. In Xcode 11 beta 7 implicit bridging to Swift is disabled for those APIs and therefore we need to …

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Property wrapper for validating email using NSDataDetector

Property wrappers allow property declaration to state what kind of property wrapper is used for implementing the property. We can use it for implementing transformations on properties like validating if string is email or not. This is what we will do: creating a property wrapper for email properties and validating emails using NSDataDetector. If value …

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Key-value observing without NSObject and dynamic modifier in Swift

When writing code in Swift it is often needed to observe changes in other objects. We can use Apple's key-value observation but it has some implications: requires to use NSObject and dynamic dispatch through Objective-C runtime. This time, let's build a simple key-value observation in Swift what does not require to use NSObject at all. …

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Testing networking code with custom URLProtocol on iOS

Testing networking code might sound tricky at first but in reality, it just means using custom URLProtocol what returns data we would like to. This allows testing the networking module without mocking URLSession. Using this approach we could do so much more, even integrating a third party networking library. Networking class wrapping URLSession Firstly, let's …

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Interactive animation with UIViewPropertyAnimator on iOS

UIViewPropertyAnimator enables configuring animations which can be modified when running. Animations can be paused and progress can be changed allowing to build interactive animations. UIViewPropertyAnimations are in stopped state by default. If we want to run the animation immediately, we can use class method runningPropertyAnimator(withDuration:delay:options:animations:completion:). UIViewPropertyAnimator gives us a lot of flexibility when it comes …

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UICollectionViewFlowLayout and auto layout on iOS

UICollectionViewFlowLayout is layout object supplied by UIKit and enables showing items in grid. It allows customising spacings and supports fixed size cells and cells with different sizes. This time I am going to show how to build a collection view containing items with different sizes where sizes are defined by auto layout constraints. Cell sizes …

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Instantiating view controllers from UIStoryboard on iOS

There are several ways how to create user interfaces on iOS: programmatically, xib per view or using storyboard for multiple views. Personally I tend to use xibs and programmatically created layouts more but sometimes I also use UIStoryboard - depends on the situation on hand. Therefore I like to present two small additions to UIStoryboard …

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Basic debugging in Xcode

Printing object description Probably the most used command when debugging apps is po. It evaluates the expression and prints out the object description. When printing custom objects, it should be noted that the format of the result can be customised by implementing debugDescription in CustomDebugStringConvertible protocol. Modifying code in runtime LLDB's expression command allows executing code when …

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Circle shaped collection view layout on iOS

UICollectionViewLayout's responsibility is to define layout: all the cell locations and sizes. It acts like a data source object which provides layout related information to the collection view. Collection view then uses that information for creating cells and placing them on screen. This time we'll take a look on how to create a custom circle …

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Particle emitters for apps with CAEmitterLayer on iOS

Particle emitters are encountered the most often in games. Apple's SpriteKit framework contains SKEmitterNode for this exact purpose. Moreover, Xcode even has a live editor for configuring SKEmitterNode. As SKEmitterNode can only be added to SKScene, it is not a good fit for apps. But no worries, apps can take advantage of CAEmitterLayer which is …

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Deforming sprites with SKWarpGeometryGrid in SpriteKit

SKWarpGeometryGrid is a grid based deformation what can be applied to nodes conforming to SKWarpable protocol. It defines normalised vertex positions for source and destination where source positions are un-warped geometry and destination warped geometry. Therefore, if destination vertex positions are not equal to source, the node will look deformed. Vertex positions Here is a …

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Using CCHmac for creating message authentication codes

This is a second part of the first post about hashing data using SHA256. Here we will look into CCHmac (Hash-based Message Authentication Code) functions and see how to use it for creating authentication codes what can be used for data integrity checks and authentication of a message. Message authentication codes Hash-based message authentication code …

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Making a property observable from outer scope using generic class Observable

We will look into how to make a property observable using a separate class managing the observers. It is an alternative and simple way of observing property changes without using ReactiveSwift, Key-Value Observing or anything else similar. It can be an excellent glue between Model and View Model in MVVM or between View and Presenter …

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Light Xcode Theme

I got tired of using dark themes and as there were no light themes I liked, I decided to create my own. I present a light Xcode theme to you: Augmented Code. Go ahead and give it a try!

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RawRepresentable and associated values

RawRepresentable is a protocol in Swift standard library and enables converting from a custom type to raw value type and back. In this post we'll be looking into how to implement RawRepresentable for enumeration containing an associated value. Conforming to RawRepresentable Implementing RawRepresentable requires three steps: firstly, choose RawValue type; secondly, implement initialiser where RawValue …

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Drawing gradients in SpriteKit

I was working on an upcoming game in SpriteKit only to discover that adding a simple gradient is not so straight-forward as one would expect. Therefore I created an extension to SKTexture. https://gist.github.com/laevandus/c38a8b9e958ef68c6730025f6b4cc7f4 This extension adds support for creating linear and radial gradients. Linear gradient can be drawn with an angle (in radians) although in …

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