William Boles - A blog about iOS development in Swift and Objective-C

The wrong abstraction leaves you with a component shared in name only, with a riot of flags charting different paths. Here, we look at how to spot this cohabiting trap, and how to escape by letting each caller take back what is theirs.

Every iOS dev hears that whisper sooner or later: "These fields look the same…you should build a form-engine." Those who follow that whisper almost always end up with an over-abstracted mess. Here, we look at building a simple validation flow that keeps us on the right path.

Modules are super useful for splitting our projects into smaller, more manageable parts. But they could be doing more. Here, we look at how a utility module can ease the burden not only for production targets but also for test targets.

Users always want more. With a background URLSession, we can give them more by extending downloads and uploads beyond the app's lifespan. Here, we look at building a solution to take advantage of a background session to download adorable cat photos 😸.

Codable is a potent tool for simplifying handling API responses. However, sometimes API responses aren't simple. Here, we look at how to handle decoding a JSON response where the returned types keep changing.

Alerts form the backbone of many user interactions. While there have been changes to alerts over the years, very little has changed about their appearance or our ability to customise that appearance leading to many tear-filled designer outbursts 😱. Here, we look at how to ease that pain.

Being British, queuing is essential to me. I take every opportunity I can get to queue. However, UIAlertController doesn't care about queuing 😞. Here, we look at how to introduce UIAlertController to the joys of queuing and ensure that each alert gets its chance to shine.

Many of us feel nervous when meeting a group of people for the first time. Your app is the same. Here, we look at how SSDP can offer a convenient way for your app to get to know its local network and overcome those nerves.

Changing a Core Data model after release risks breaking the data your users already have. Here, we look at how to migrate progressively, step-by-step through each model version, using lightweight migrations and custom NSEntityMigrationPolicy subclasses.

In our day-to-day life, dates are simple and straightforward - we read them, make plans around them, and share them. Apart from the occasional missed birthday, things go smoothly. But we've been deceived - dates are anything but simple. Here, we look at how to keep our dates local and truthful.

DateFormatters are expensive to build, so we cache them. DateFormatters are useful, so we share that cache. DateFormatters are mutable, so we end up with hard-to-reproduce bugs. Here, we look at how to cache and share DateFormatters without the bugs that come from them being shared mutable state.

Operations have a reputation for being chunky, especially compared to GCD. However, once you get to know operations, you realise that they are the OOP approach to concurrency in iOS. Here, we look at how to use operations to build a networking layer by encapsulating multiple steps into one unit.

In iOS, we can use background-transfers to extend the life of our downloads and uploads beyond the app's lifespan, offering our users a better experience by using a background URLSession. Here, we look at how to build that better experience.

A lot of us enjoy programming for fun. A lot ends up on GitHub. A lot of companies use GitHub for non-fun programming. A lot of us use the same computer for both types of programming. Here, we look at how to have two different GitHub accounts on the same computer to avoid accidentally seeing work.