Blog by Jeevan

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Showing posts from August, 2016

iOS Beginner Level [Part 2/4]: Familiar Objective-C Classes

[1] NSUserDefaults NSUserDefaults object used to read information and caches information in user’s default data base. Stores the data in Plist. The synchronised method of this class automatically invoked at a period of intervals to sync the memory cache the data base. ex: `[defaults synchronize];` Always returns the immutable values. Non-persistent data storage. [2] NSBundle This object locates your app in the file system from where you can access resources and use them in your programs. [3] UIResponder: Subclass of NSObject defines the interface for objects ( likely abstract class) objects responds to this class and it handles those events. It is the super class of UIApplication, UIWindow , UIView (including all of its subclasses). Handles all type of touch events, motion events. [4] NSCoder NSCoder is an abstractClass which represents a stream of data. They are used in Archiving and Unarchiving objects. NSCoder objects are...

IOS Beginner level [Part 1/4]: Basic concepts and terminology

Started developing iOS apps? Great ! Before that make sure you have familiar with basic concepts covered in this post. Most probably you started using, but totally unaware of it. All these topics are the checklist for your next interview or your presentation and also you are welcome even if use it as cheatsheet. Again I want to stress that it covers only the topic definition or few lines of description. You can find good tutorial sites for rest of in depth explanation. [1] App A large ecosystem of interconnected objects that communicate with each other to solve specific problem such as displaying user interface, responding events, inputs and storing information. [2] App ID App id is a 2 part string used to identify one or more apps from a single development team. Combination of Team Id and Bundle ID separated by a period character(.) There are 2 types of App Id’s , an Explicit app id used for single app and wildcard app ids (with domain na...

Animating label text update - choosing a better way

Recently I published a countdown app . At one point of development - I have to show a timer on a UILabel which ticks on each seconds. As usual I started setting text to a label object - self .timerLabel.text = someString Easy piece of cake right !? But wait ... it won't take much user attention when timer ticks on every seconds. So I decided to make use of a simple animation while label gets text update. I found there are dozens of ways to animate a label. In this short article, I listed 3 best way you can animate text on a label. ( Spoiler Alert 👀- I decided to go with 3rd option) 1. Fade In - Fade out animation : CATransition class has got transition type `fade`. With timing function of CATransition - I was able to see the below result. let animation: CATransition = CATransition () animation.timingFunction = CAMediaTimingFunction (name: CAMediaTimingFunctionName .easeInEaseOut) animation.type = CATransitionType .fade animation.subtype = C...

Prevent Navigationbar or Tabbar overlapping Subview - solved for Card view

Recently, I started with a Card view added as a subview of UIView in a view-controller. When a view controller created along subviews, it tends to use entire screen bounds and also slips behind Tab bar or Navigation bar. In my current situation, it's second case. Casually new iOS developers will write a patch by additional value for coordinate y and subtracting bar height from its size. A lot of them posted in SO threads too : How to prevent UINavigationBar from covering top of view? View got hidden below UINavigationBar iOS 7 Navigation Bar covers some part of view at Top So, how I got solved ? self.edgesForExtendedLayout = [] This will avoid all subviews in a view controller get behind any bars. Read full apple documentation on here. Full Source code below : //Simple view controller where its view layed-out as a card. class WidgetCardViewController : UIViewController { var containerView = UIView () //MARK:- View Controller Life Cyc...

UICollectionViewCell shows with wrong size on First time - Solved

We commonly use Collection view where its cell size calculated run time. The flow layout delegate is responsible to return individual cell sizes. BUT in most of the cases, delegate method `collectionView: layout sizeForItem:` expects cell size too early. Before generating actual cell size. extension YourViewController : UICollectionViewDelegateFlowLayout { func collectionView ( _ collectionView: UICollectionView, layout collectionViewLayout: UICollectionViewLayout, sizeForItemAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> CGSize { return CGSize (width: externalWidth, height: externalHeight) } } For instance, if a cell size depends on external view and its frame is not yet ready - results with wrong (or outdated) cell size. Typically happens for the first time view controller laid out all views. You can find similar queries in StackOverflow community : Collection view sizeForItemNotWorking UICollectionViewCell content wrong size on first load How to refresh UICollec...

Implementing autocompletion OTP field in iOS

Long waiting is over. !! iOS 12 brings Autofill for OTP text field which is close to Android provided a decade back. Previously in iOS we used to toggle between OTP text screen and message inbox. Which was hard to remember and time consuming resulting a bad user experience. Personally, I have been asked from the client/customer couple of times to implement autocompletion for OTP field and took me a lot of time to convey that it is not possible in iOS. Why Autofill was not possible previously? We all know that Apple gives at most care for user privacy. When we see iOS architecture, each individual app is like a separate island. There is no inter-app bridge between apps (exception for Keychain and URLSchemes APIs which gives very limited scope). Thus we cannot read message content from inbox. Where to start Autofilling? First of all, the target SMS need to have the OTP Code with prefix string "Code" or "Passcode"on its message content. Beware of OTP c...

Static variable vs Class variable in Swift

How Static properties differs to usual properties ? Used to create type properties with either let or var. These are shared between all objects of a class. During class loading time, a single memory location allocated for the property if we declared as static. Static property belongs to a class (or struct) Type rather than Instance of class (or struct). Hence it also called Type Properties What if we declare "static var" ? Since it's a variable, we can change it in future even after initialised. When we change the value of the static variable property, that property is now changed in all future instances. What if we declare "static let" ? static let instance : Singleton = Singleton() Since it's constant, we cannot change once initialised. Its value will remain same even if we share among all the instance or object of a class or struct. Useful to adopt singleton pattern. How class variables differ static variables ? It dif...