Friday, December 19, 2014

iOS Development with Swift - Udacity Review

Udacity is not only a great place to learn, but a community full of experts, enthusiast and pioneers in what educations should be like. I took my first course way back in 2012. I was not only really motivated  to learn  and follow the course, but also amazed of how with IT you have the power to make the world a better place.

This short post is quick review and summary of what I learn so far in the latest course I am taking at Udacity.


 Intro to iOS App Development with Swift


Basics about the iOS official IDE: Xcode:

  • IDE structure
  • Adding resources to the project (images and media files)
  • Using the StoryBoard


Basic concepts behind the MVC design patter, creating and iOS App using the Swift programing language in Xcode:

  • ViewControllers: Inherit from UIViewController class
  • Each View that contains UI Objects (Buttons, Labels, Eg) should have its own ViewController
  • NavigationController: Allows you to create the navigation between views
  • UIObjects can be bind to the controllers in two different ways:
    • Outlet: Creates a reference or pointer to the UI object in order to use it inside the controller
    • Action: Creates a method that allows you to react to a UI event


Two powerful frameworks that you can use to create iOS Apps:

  • UIKit: Provides the elements that allows you to create the user interface (UI)
  • AVFoundation: basic services for working with time-based audiovisual media
Creating the UI of an App:
  • Using the story board you can easily create the UI of an application with drag on drop. 
  • You can add a UI object by dragging it from Utilities panel and placing inside the View in the story board.
  • In order to place the UI elements dynamically you must used constraints. 
  • To add a constraint hold the ctrl key over the UI element and drag it to the side.  (Eg: center horizontally)
  • You can bind UI objects to the ViewController by holding the ctrl key and dragging the mouse pointer from the UI Object to the ViewController class

1 comment:

  1. Hi Santiago,

    Thank you for writing this blog. I wanted to check in to see if there was more progress on your Swift journey. Also, do you mind posting screenshots of your app?

    Let us know if we can help in any way.

    Kunal Chawla

    ReplyDelete