Author Archives: Josh Smith

Command line calculator in Swift 4.2

Posted on January 8, 2019 by Josh Smith

I just published a command line calculator written in Swift 4.2 with a big README explaining how it all works. What a fun challenge! Enjoy… https://github.com/ijoshsmith/command-line-calculator

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Simple deep linking in Swift

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Josh Smith

If you need to support deep links with a custom URL scheme in your iOS or tvOS app, check out my tidy little API to help convert URLs into deep link objects. It’s written in Swift 3. I published it on … Continue reading →

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Reflectable enums in Swift 3

Posted on April 8, 2017 by Josh Smith

Suppose you are working on a Swift program that needs a data model to represent a contact, such as a person from the user’s address book or a FaceBook friend. You might start off by modeling this as a Contact … Continue reading →

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Generate Equatable code in Swift

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Josh Smith

Here is my Swift 3 utility function for turning a live class/struct instance into Equatable protocol code for that type: https://github.com/ijoshsmith/equatable-code-generator Here’s to never writing that kind of code ever again!

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Function composition in Swift

Posted on January 21, 2017 by Josh Smith

The way that functional programming languages allow functions to be combined can help make code easier to read and understand. The technique is known as function composition. I show how to compose functions in Swift 3 using custom operators, including a … Continue reading →

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json2swift: a peek under the hood

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Josh Smith

This article presents a high-level overview of how my json2swift tool works. Several people have expressed interest in using my code as the foundation for a similar tool, or just want to change the Swift code it generates, and have asked … Continue reading →

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Swift JSON library vs. code generation

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Josh Smith

Ever since Swift was first released there has been an endless stream of new libraries to simplify writing Swift code that consumes JSON data. Since this is such a common and tedious aspect of developing apps, it’s an important topic … Continue reading →

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Create Swift data models from JSON

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Josh Smith

I published a tool that analyzes JSON data and generates Swift data model code, named json2swift. This tool helps eliminate most of the error-prone grunt work involved with consuming JSON data in a Swift app. The repository’s README has more … Continue reading →

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Concealment design pattern in Swift

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Josh Smith

This article introduces a design pattern that I call Concealment, and demonstrates how to use the pattern in Swift code. Purpose The Concealment pattern enables types to support novel, related functionality without adding nonessential members to their interface. Motivation User-defined types can easily be overused in a codebase, giving more prominence to … Continue reading →

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Analyzing a dependency graph in Swift

Posted on June 8, 2016 by Josh Smith

I published my solution to Dave Thomas’s Transitive Dependencies programming exercise, known as a kata, to GitHub: https://github.com/ijoshsmith/transitive-dependencies-kata The Challenge This exercise involves analyzing a graph data structure which contains nodes that “depend on” other nodes. A graph is represented as direct dependencies between nodes: The objective is to find all … Continue reading →

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