Introducing the Server-Side Swift Celebration!

Feb 25 2019

We’ve launched an entire section devoted to server-side Swift on raywenderlich.com with new books, courses, screencasts and tutorials. Check it out! By Chris Belanger.

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Introducing the Server-Side Swift Celebration!

25 mins

Ever since Swift was first announced, raywenderlich.com has been a massive supporter of the language. Swift is modern, clean, fun, and it’s the best way to develop not just iOS apps, but server-side APIs and web apps as well!

That’s why raywenderlich.com is super excited to announce something we’ve been working on secretly for the last few months.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s the Server-Side Swift Celebration!

As part of the Server-Side Swift Celebration we’re announcing our lineup of new and updated server-side Swift books and video courses — and we’ve wrapped them up in a time-limited bundle that you can get at a massive discount:

We’re running this celebration for two weeks, and we have a lot to cover in those few days! Here’s a quick overview of what’s in store:

Why Server-Side Swift?

Developing for Swift on the server is a much different deal than developing for iOS; you have to understand server deployment, testing against your API, supporting multiple client platforms, as well as try to learn about all of the great server-side Swift frameworks out there.

You can now use Swift natively on macOS, Linux or even Windows for your server-side application development. With frameworks such as Vapor and Kitura, you can quickly build production-ready Swift web apps that can connect to databases, utilize templating for pages, pass messages via websockets, and deploy to various cloud-based solutions with ease. It’s a brave new Swift world out there!

We think that Swift on the server is one of the most exciting things to happen with Swift in the last few years, so it deserves its own curated space on the site.

Vapor vs. Kitura: At this time, the most popular server-side Swift frameworks are Vapor and Kitura. They both have active development teams and communities, and are being used in production projects.

One of the most common questions we hear from developers is “Which one is better: Vapor or Kitura?”

At raywenderlich.com, we feel that both frameworks are excellent, so we plan to cover both frameworks on our site.

Vapor and Kitura each have slightly different personalities, philosophies, and approaches, so your decision on which to use depends on “Which framework best matches my own approach and priorities?”

To learn more, check out our recent post on Vapor vs. Kitura.

New Server-Side Swift Section on raywenderlich.com

Just like our iOS, Android, Unity and Unreal Engine sections on the site, we now have a brand-new section of raywenderlich.com dedicated to server-side Swift!

Just go to Explore\Server-Side Swift:

And you’ll see this:

Meet our new Server-Side Swift section on raywenderlich.com!

This new section of raywenderlich.com is your one-stop shop for all the latest and greatest tutorials and articles to help you stay on top of everything you need to know about using Swift on the server.

And to give our new Server-Side Swift section a balanced view, we’ve brought in two heavyweights as Team Leads for this new server-side Swift community. They’re here to bring you hard-won and battle-tested advice from the server-side Swift frontlines:

Tim Condon — heading up the Vapor side of our content.

David Okun — handling everything Kitura.

We want to support the growing server-side Swift community as best we can, so Tim and David will work with our Server-Side Swift team to develop lots of new content for our Server-Side Swift section over time.

Now — on to everything we’re launching with the Server-Side Swift Celebration!

New Server-Side Swift Books

To lead off the Server-Side Swift Celebration, we are featuring our two best books on server-side Swift development: our brand new book, Server Side Swift with Kitura, and our newly updated book, Server Side Swift with Vapor, Second Edition!

1) Server Side Swift with Kitura

Kitura gives you the power to create production-ready RESTful APIs written in Swift. Coupled with the power of Docker and Kubernetes, you can take your Swift to the server and beyond!

Server Side Swift with Kitura will walk you through the development of EmojiJournal, a social network focused on your feelings. You’ll learn how REST works, how to document your API, how to set up an ORM and user authentication, and even how to create a web front-end as well as an iOS front-end. You’ll also learn about how to use powerful deployment tools to manage and run your API in any popular cloud that you choose!

This book is for any developer who has had some exposure to Swift and wants to learn how to use those skills to write code that operates on the server.

Here’s a short, non-exhaustive list of what’s covered in the book:

  • KueryORM: Learn how to map your Swift API to PostgreSQL, a very popular database.
  • The OpenAPI Spec: Learn how to self-document your API, and to provide a tool for rapidly testing and iterating on it.
  • Stencil: Use an open-source templating tool to create a web-app for your Swift app on the server.
  • Authentication: Protect your Swift API from unwanted requests and learn how to apply multiple different types of protection.
  • Security: Demystify the world of TLS and learn how to secure communications to and from your server.
  • Deployment: Localhost isn’t enough — push your server to production with Docker & Kubernetes.
  • And much, much more!

Server Side Swift with Kitura is 100% complete and available today — and it’s on sale as part of our Server Side Swift Super Bundle.

Server Side Swift with Kitura Authors

Of course, our Server Side Swift with Kitura book would be nothing without the efforts from the hard-working authors on this book:

Chris Bailey is a co-author of this book. Chris is a software developer and architect at IBM. He’s been working on programming languages and web frameworks longer than it’s polite to discuss. Somewhere along that journey, he got got involved in the very early days of Swift on Linux and became the chief architect for the Kitura web framework.

David Okun is a co-author of this book. He is a mobile software developer turned developer advocate for IBM in Austin, TX. David has been primarily focused on iOS mobile software, but is also interested in Swift on the Server, and other web technologies such as Node.js.