Posts

SwiftUI’s contextMenu modifier is a simple API that does a lot for us. I wrote about building context menus in both UIKit and SwiftUI recently. I did not go into detail about support for the custom previews that landed in iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and macOS 13. Let us fill that gap. Recap: Context menus in SwiftUI A context menu is equivalent of a right-click on touch devices. Using long‑press (or Control‑click on the Mac) on a view reveals a menu of options exactly where the user needs it. In pure SwiftUI we use .contextMenu to create these menus: ...

In this post we’re going to add context menus to a UIKit UITableView. The end goal is to have something that looks like this: Why Use Context Menus? Context menus are great for keeping things tidy while still offering useful features. They: Keep your UI minimal Only show options when needed Feel natural with the iOS long-press gesture Save you adding extra buttons all over the UI – the menu keeps them tucked out of sight until needed. What We’re Making We’ll show a short list of fruit. When we long-press any item we will show a context menu with three options: ...

The aim for this post to build a very simple List view. When you long-press a row you will see a classic iOS context menu. It will look a little like this: Why Context Menus? Context menus give users an easy way to discover secondary actions right where they’re looking. They: Keep the primary UI clean. Surface actions only when they’re relevant. Feel familiar thanks to the long-press gesture we already use across iOS. What We’ll Build We’ll create a simple list of fruit. A long-press on any row reveals three actions: ...

Debugging SwiftUI views can feel a little challenging due to its declarative nature. In this post, we’ll explore how to add print statements into your SwiftUI code to observe state changes, view updates, and data flow. Why use print in SwiftUI? SwiftUI’s declarative paradigm means you describe what your UI should look like, and the framework handles when to update it. This can make it easier to reason about but harder to debug lifecycle events and UI-related state changes. print statements give you: ...

Building URLs safely and expressively is a common requirement in Swift applications—especially when dealing with REST APIs. In this post, we’ll explore four elegant approaches to construct URLs in Swift: manual string interpolation, Foundation’s URLComponents, a custom URL‐builder DSL, and an enum‐driven router. By the end, you’ll have a clear sense of trade‐offs and patterns you can adopt in your own codebase. Manual String Interpolation The simplest approach is to build the URL by concatenating strings: ...

In Swift 5.4, a powerful new feature was introduced that revolutionised how we can work with composable pieces of code: Result Builders. If you’ve written any SwiftUI code, you’ve probably already encountered this feature without realizing it. Result Builders underpin much of the magic that makes SwiftUI’s declarative syntax possible. However, their use isn’t limited to SwiftUI. In this blog post, we’re going to delve into Result Builders, what they are, and how you can use them to build more expressive and powerful APIs. ...