Announcing UIKit Apprentice, Second Edition!

Are you new to iOS and Swift? 🤨

Does building your first iOS app sound intimidating? 😨

“Yes! I mean, where do I even start?” 🤔

Enter, UIKit Apprentice! 📚

UIKit Apprentice is here to help you:

• Learn Swift and iOS development from scratch!
• Brush up on your iOS and Swift knowledge—if you already have some experience.
• Build four complete apps from scratch.
• Optimize apps for iPad.
• Learn how to publish apps to the App Store!

Who Is This Book For?

This book is for complete beginners who want to learn iOS, Swift and UIKit. This book walks you through everything from setting up a new project to submitting your app to Apple and publishing to the App Store.

What’s Inside the Book?

This freshly-updated edition of UIKit Apprentice starts with the basics of Swift and UIKit.

Section I: Getting Started

This section introduces you to the first of the four apps you’ll build over the course of this book—Bull’s Eye.
As you progress through building the Bull’s Eye app, the section will teach you:

• How to think like a programmer.
• How to plan your programming tasks.
• how to use Xcode and Interface Builder.
• Basics of coding for iOS.

Here’s a sneak peek at Bull’s Eye:

Section II: Checklists

This section builds upon what you learnt in the previous section.

Checklists, the second app you’ll be building, takes you from a single-screen app to a multi-screen app where you learn:

• The concepts of navigation flow
• Displaying data lists
• The idea of modeling and persisting your data

Here’s a sneak peek at Checklists:

Section III: MyLocations

With this third section, you’ll build the MyLocations app. You’ll get into Swift programming in earnest. This section starts off with a good review of all the Swift coding principles + new concepts.

You’ll also learn how to:

• Use GPS coordinates.
• Display data on maps.
• Use the iOS image picker to take photos using your camera or to pick existing images from your photo album.
• Build apps for Dark mode—in brief, because we’ll take a deep dive in the next section!

Here’s a sneak peek at MyLocations:

Section IV: StoreSearch

The final section of the book covers building an app which supports both Light and Dark appearances from scratch via the StoreSearch app. StoreSearch shows you how to:

• Have separate custom assets and colors for each type of iOS appearance.
• Implement custom screens both for specific orientations (landscape vs. portrait) as well as for specific platforms (iPhone vs. iPad).
• Network, work with remote API endpoints to fetch data needed by your app, and parse the fetched data.
• Work with Stack Views.
• Add iPad support to your app.

This section also takes you through the full application life cycle – from developing the code, testing it, and all the way to submitting to Apple.

Here’s a sneak peek at StoreSearch:

What Do You Need?

To follow along with this book, you’ll need the following:

• A Mac computer with an Intel/ARM processor: Any Mac that you’ve bought in the last few years will do, even a Mac mini or MacBook Air.
• Xcode 13 and Swift 5.5: Xcode is the main development tool for writing code in Swift. You’ll need Xcode 13 at a minimum, since that version includes Swift 5.5. You can download the latest version of Xcode for free from the Mac App Store.
• Optionally, an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 15.

How to Get Your Own Copy

There are two ways you can get this book:

• Buy it individually: If you want to build up a custom library without a subscription, you can choose to buy the book individually. It’s available now for just $59.99 in our online store.
• Get it as part of our Pro and Beginner subscription: Enjoy access to our videos and mobile development books in our Ultimate Pro and Ultimate Beginner subscriptions, including UIKit Apprentice! Right now, you can get a full year’s subscription and save 20% off the cost of a regular monthly subscription. It’s simply the best investment for your development career.

We hope you enjoy this book! Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions.

Say Hi to our Team! 👋

Meet the awesome folks who contributed to this book…

Fahim Farook [Author]: Fahim Farook is the author of this book. He is a developer with over 30 years of experience in developing in over a dozen different languages. Fahim’s current focus is on mobile development with over 100+ iOS apps, 10+ macOS apps, a few Android apps, and several Flutter apps under his belt. He has lived in Sri Lanka, USA, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, France, the UAE, Spain, and Canada, and enjoys science fiction and fantasy novels, TV shows, and movies. You can follow Fahim on Twitter at @FahimFarook.

Matthijs Hollemans [Contributor]: Matthijs Hollemans, the original creator of the Swift Algorithm Club. Matthijs contributed many of the implementations and corresponding explanations for the various data structures and algorithms in the Swift Algorithm Club that were used in this book, in particular: Graph, Heap, AVL Tree, BST, Breadth First Search, Depth First Search, Linked List, Stack & Queue, Tree, Selection Sort, Bubble Sort, Insertion Sort, Quick Sort, Merge Sort, and Heap Sort. Matthijs spends much of his time now in machine learning. Learn more at machinethink.net.

Start Reading for Free Today

This updated edition of UIKit Apprentice is out now—and what’s more, you can start reading the book for free:

• raywenderlich.com/books/uikit-apprentice/

UIKit Apprentice has been automatically added to the collections of all Ultimate Beginner and Ultimate Pro subscribers.

On behalf of the book team, we hope this book helps you learn iOS, Swift and UIKit and begin your journey as a iOS developer!