Swift Essentials provides an overview of the Swift language and the tooling necessary to write iOS applications. From simple Swift commands on the command line to interactively testing graphical content in the Playground editor, the Swift language and syntax is introduced by examples.
The book also introduces end-to-end iOS application development by showing you how a simple iOS application can be created, followed by how to use storyboards and custom views to build a more complex networked application.
The book concludes by providing a worked example from scratch that builds up a GitHub repository browser.
Chapter 1, Exploring Swift, presents the Swift read-evaluate-print-loop (REPL) and introduces the Swift language through examples on standard data types, functions, and looping.
Chapter 2, Playing with Swift, demonstrates Swift Playgrounds as a means to interactively play with the Swift code and obtain graphical results. It also introduces the playground format and shows how playgrounds can be created automatically from Markdown and AsciiDoc files.
Chapter 3, Creating an iOS Swift App, shows you how to create and test an iOS application built in Swift using Xcode, along with an overview of the Swift classes, protocols, and enums.
Chapter 4, Storyboard Applications with Swift and iOS, introduces the concept of Storyboards as a means to create a multiscreen iOS application and shows how views in Interface Builder can be wired to Swift outlets and actions.
Chapter 5, Creating Custom Views in Swift, covers custom views in Swift using custom table views, laying out nested views, drawing custom graphics, and layered animations.
Chapter 6, Parsing Networked Data, demonstrates how Swift can talk to networked services, using both HTTP and custom stream-based protocols.
Chapter 7, Building a Repository Browser, uses the techniques described in this book to build a repository browser that can display information about users' GitHub repositories.
Appendix provides additional references and resources to continue learning about Swift.