I have an objective c project in Xcode wherein i must have two apps with complimentary functionality. For convenience I have written all of my functionality inside one app but now I need to really separate this into two distinct apps. My question is about how to go about creating the second app. Should I just duplicate the Xcode project folder and make my changes there? I've also read a little about targets. Is that a potential solution to this?
Yes, it sounds like adding another target to your existing project is the way to go for what you're trying to achieve. This article might prove useful to you: https://itexico.com/blog/iOS-Mobile-Development-Using-Xcode-Targets-to-Reuse-the-Code
Yes, target is the way to do it.
Useful link to understand what it is:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/featuredarticles/XcodeConcepts/Concept-Targets.html
It depends how the two apps will differ. If the GUI will be very similar then different targets would do.
But if you want flexibility to change the GUI of each app by big amounts then you could create separate projects but put common model functionality into a library which is linked to by the different projects.
Yes you can achieve it by following approachs
Adding a new Target and reusing the code and resources
Or create a framework in a generic way and pull all the reusable codes and resources in that, through this you only need to drag and drop the .framework file in any of you current or future models.
I suggest go with framework
Related
Android has very good tools for creating different variants of an app (for example, the exact same code but with a different logo). You just create a different flavour and put a different image for each flavour's directory. How do I achieve this in Xcode? The information I have found on the web is very bad. I tried creating a new target for my project but that created a new storyboard, AppDelegate etc. It just created a new app altogether. I want different resource folders for different brands of the app. I'm using Swift.
You're not likely to get the same kind of setup you could have with Android. There are a bunch of features you could use individually or in combination. rmaddy's comments are good. Another option is creating additional schemes and setting the properties of the project for each one. The important thing to keep in mind is that the simplest solution may not look the way you're expecting.
I am a (very) novice iOS/Swift programmer with a basic question about moving reusable software objects to their own ... something.
I am developing three iPhone apps that present information from three distinct data sets. Those data sets contain unique information but are structurally similar. As such, the apps share some Swift classes that are identical, specifically the classes that model the data. As I continually refactor the code, I find that when I tweak a class in one app's project, I have to remember to go to the other two projects and make the same tweaks to the same classes for those apps. It's getting to be a big headache.
What I would like to do is have one class definition in its own ... something that I can share, link, import, or attach to/from each app's project. From my online research, I suspect that the ... something is a library? or maybe it's a framework? or a module? I have found all three terms are used, but I am not sure how they relate to each other.
Given that all of the software I am writing is in Swift, does Xcode support what I am trying to do? Thank you!
It seems you have the issue of needing the same Swift class in multiple projects. You could build a Framework (aka Module) for this class then copy it in to each project. This is probably the formally correct approach but it is a bit of overkill for just a single class.
Instead, you could just make the file in the Navigator panel a reference in each project to the one actual file.
You could also make a Workspace and then put each project into the workspace and just have the file at the top level (but this may introduce some build complexity).
Im currently working on a iOS project where we now want to add some feature for the Apple Watch. Since the extension for Apple Watch is a different target I naturally can't access the code written for the App. I have searched here on stackoverflow and have found two different ways to solve this problem.
Create a dynamic frameworks. This would definitely be the best approach but unfortunately the app must support down to iOS 6, and what I have found this solution will only work on iOS 8+.
Link the files in either Build Phases -> Compile Sources or through Target Membership in File Inspector. The main problem here is that the two classes we want to use have many dependencies to many other classes, which also have other dependencies and so on. From what I understand I need to include all these other files as well if I want to make use of the classes I intend to use in the extension.
So my question is if there is any other better way for me to accomplish this. If I choose #2, first of all I need to include all files, and after that, from a maintenance point of view, if I make changes to there files, for example importing an other class, I need to include that one as well in Compile Sources / Target Membership. Would really appreciate any ideas or advice regarding this! Thank you!
I don't know how "deep" is your coupling regarding point 2. However if you can use interfaces(protocols) instead of direct class referencing you can separate just the classes you need.
Moreover you could re-think whether specific class really need some other class to operate(probably not) or just some methods from it. Those methods could be moved to protocol and your dependant class to implement it(now this class do not need to be part of AppWatch target).
This will be heavy work though if your project is really big and your classes are tightly coupled. I would advice you to read this article about Dependency Injection and especially 'Dependency is bigger than Testing part' :)
I built an iOS project (actually workspace because of Pods) that is 100% functional, with its logic and UI (Storyboard and xibs). Now I would like to reuse this app/project as a "core" for future apps.
I've been searching about it and there are several solutions like Static libraries, Frameworks and Targets. But I am not sure which one would be the best in my case. I would like to reuse all the UI part as well.
I saw that most of the people agree that the best approach for reusing code is static libraries, even thought it looks not so straight forward. But I think for reusing UI probably Targets is the best solution. The problem I see is that if a build 10 apps based on my core project, the new project will be huge, so probably it is not the best option.
I don't know if you guys have any better idea or opinion.
Thanks in advance!!
There are several things you can do, and I will try to go through them.
If you have minor changes on your "base" app, then the best thing would be using targets(build schemes). This way you can add things to build phases and therefore, add files that you need. This might be the quickest possible way to do what you want but here are some drawbacks: What if you have 5 apps, and for each one you have QA and prod. That 10 build phases. If you keep using your app in no time you will find hard to manage it.
Another thing could be to create different project, and include all the files you have (and you need), inherit from there and have extended functionality/UI/UX. This is slower approach then number 1, but you will have dependency on the files that you might change in one app and don't want to propagate that change in other apps. So the drawback would be that you have to be extra careful, and plan a lot of things in advance.
Third thing could be to create base app group(or project) and then you are certain what to do, where and what that change could do to other apps(since you know that this file is actually being reused).
And finally, there is a framework, which is my favorite. I am working on one project that inherits base app and we found that is a huge problem. You start separated and then, one thing by one, you have entangled code for specific app and base app like headphones in pocket. And if you don't refactor it ASAP, it will became really hard to resolve these kind of issue. Not to mention merging and other stuff. Here is an excellent article about creating framework http://www.raywenderlich.com/65964/create-a-framework-for-ios . Off course, there is a price to pay and that's every change that you create you must update library and add it again to project. This thing can be easily forgotten and if you are working in team could produce build crash.
All after all, you predicate that you will have more then 5 apps, so I would say go with the framework. This way you will have much cleaner and separated app, and won't have to think about changing things and how these changes would affect your other apps.
I recommend you use a custom project template. I did it perfectly today. I had the same needs as your. Follow this link: https://github.com/reidmain/Xcode-6-Project-Templates/tree/master/iOS%20Application.xctemplate
Download it. You can add all the files from existing project into this template, storyboards too. If you have any doubts I will help you.
I have different project set up for iPhone and iPAD and most of the file names in these two projects are same. Now i would like to merge these two into one and create a Universal build. Is there any tutorial or a better way to handle this without reworking on the complete code.
Please help. Thanks.
I already did that before. At that time, we did not have the choice to rename all the files and classes of one project. Objective-c does not have namespace, unfortunately.
Don't know how big is your project, but with rename/replace or re-factoring tool, you would be able to that without any (to much) pain.
If you use StoryBoard, then you can choose your project and when you choose Universal, you can set two different StoryBoards for iPhone and for iPad.
So you will have an application which initialize it according to iOS device.
And if you have same class names, I suggest you to change one of those with one character difference (eg. ViewController and PViewController (P for phone..)) and refactor all related class according to it.
Good luck!