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

We want to test that our network stacks can make network requests as intended but without actually making those requests. Here, we look at how to split our networking stack into components to allow easy unit testing.

Operations are a powerful way to move work off the main thread. But just because work is undertaken on a background thread doesn't mean we don't care about it. Here, we look at how to coalesce duplicated work.

Preprocessor Macros don't work with Swift. Here, we look at how to switch to using Active Compilation Conditions to enable configuration-specific build settings.

Constructing an effective interview process is challenging. Ask too much of candidates, and the best ones will have an offer from elsewhere before they finish your process. Ask too little and misfire on a hire. Here, we look at how to hit that sweet spot in between.

Parsing an API response into an app type is fundamental to any networked app. Here, we look at how to build a consistent response parsing approach to make that task easier than ever before.

Migrating any project from Objective-C to Swift is full of pitfalls. These pitfalls exist not just in the code itself but also the supporting structure. Here, we look at one of those pitfalls related to cocoapods.

No one said running your unit tests on Travis CI would be easy. Who knew running tests via the Xcode UI wasn't the same as running those tests via the terminal 🤷‍♂️? Here, we look at how to prepare your test targets for running on Travis CI.

No one wants networking code scattered everywhere. Here, we look at how to utilise NSOperation to encapsulate each networking request within its own cancellable unit of work.

Everyone has a view on how to style code. None of that matters. What matters is that, as a team, you agree on the most important styles to enable developers to feel a sense of familiarity when navigating the project, regardless of who wrote the code. Here, we look at some style rules.

People form tribes. It's such an ingrained part of human nature. Our tribe becomes part of our identity. You see this behaviour in every aspect of human society. You see it in development teams. Here, we look at how to overcome this instinct when we need to merge two development teams.

Following Single-Responsibility Principle, gives focus to your code and in turn your project. Here, we look at how to use that focus to find hidden modules, extract and keep them whole for the long-term.

View controller accumulate stuff. If you are not careful you can turn in a view controller into a hoarder's den. Here, we look at how to extract functionality from a view controller and rehome it using Single-Responsibility Principle.

Some code is inherently murky, and good naming practices can only take us so far — looking at you, animation code. Where the intent of code is hard to decipher, high-quality developers use documentation to overcome that murkiness. Here, we look at how to use appledoc to produce documentation.

Everywhere you look, you are being told to write unit tests, but what even are unit tests? Here, we look at what testing is, why you need them, who should write them and when to write them. And ultimately how unit tests allow you to go faster.