Posts Tagged ‘swift’
There are many instances where you would need to support multiple configurations within your iOS app beyond the standard debug and release project configuration. Let’s suppose you app needs to talk to different server deployments – Development, QA and Production. In this case , you would want your app targeted for a specific environment to be configured to talk to the appropriate server deployment. This blog post describes how you can do that within your swift iOS app. Things are slightly different with Obj-C, where you could define preprocessor flags within your .xcconfig files created for each environment . But with limited support for macros in swift, we will follow a slightly different approach
Step 1: Create desired configurations for Dev, QA and Prod
- Under Project-Demo , add new configurations based upon existing Debug and Release configurations.
- Duplicate the Debug configuration as a “Dev” configuration and duplicate the Release configuration as “QA” and “Prod” configurations .
- Delete the Debug and Release configuration
Step 2: Add new schemes for Dev, QA and Prod configurations
Step 3: Make sure that the schemes created in Step 2 are “visible”
Step 4: Edit schemes created in Step2 and associate it with the appropriate configuration
So associate the QA scheme with QA configuration , the Dev scheme with Dev configuration and the Prod scheme with Prod configuration. 
Step 5: Add a new user-defined build setting under Build Settings under tab.
This setting has a different value for each of the configurations. 
Step 6: Add a info.plist property corresponding to the user-defined setting
Step 7: In your app, read the info.plist property
That's it. Take appropriate actions depending on the configuration setting.
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func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplicationLaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool { // Override point for customization after application launch. let deployName = Bundle.main.object(forInfoDictionaryKey: "Deployment") as! String switch deployName { case "DEV": print ("Dev Deployment. Connect to Dev server") case "QA": print ("QA Deployment. Connect to Dev server") case "PROD": print ("Prod Deployment. Connect to Dev server") default: print("Unsupported") } return true } |
A demo project can be downloaded from here.
Highcharts Support in a Native iOS App
There are many options available to display charts within your [native] iOS apps. You could write one yourself (why?) or use one of the many third party libraries that are available . Check out this GitHub repo for a list of charting libraries in swift/ ObjC.
However, if you are interested in using Highcharts within your app, then read on . Highcharts is a popular JS charting engine and you can learn more about it at http://www.highcharts.com.
This post will demonstrate how you can load a Highcharts based chart into a iOS native app. We will use the example charts available as part of the Highcharts library. A more interesting and complete example that demonstrates how you can dynamically load chart data is available at https://github.com/rajagp/iOS_Highcharts_Sample.
1) Download the sample xcode app project from http://www.priyaontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/HighchartDemo.zip. This is a simple single view application that will load a .html file into a WKWebView.
2) Download the Highcharts library from http://www.highcharts.com/download
3) Once downloaded , unzip its contents and examine it. You should see contents list similar to screenshot below
4) Navigate to the “examples” folder
5) Copy the “index.htm” file from any of the examples into your project. Make sure you copy it into your project
6) Your project should look something like this
7) In your xcode project, open and review the the index.htm file that you just copied over. It contains a JS function that creates a chart using the Highcharts chart API as defined in http://api.highcharts.com/highcharts/chart. The chart data and options are defined statically.
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$(function() { // Create the chart Highcharts.chart('container', { chart: { type: 'column' }, title: { text: 'Browser market shares. January, 2015 to May, 2015' }, ……… |
8) Now, open the “ChartViewController.swift” file and review it. This is a simple view controller that manages a WKWebview and loads the index.html into the web view.
Look for the “loadContainerPage” function . This is where the index.htm is loaded.
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fileprivate func loadContainerPage() { print(#function) // Loads the index.html that is the base page for loading the chart guard let filePath = Bundle(for: ChartViewController.self). path(forResource: "index", ofType: "htm") else{ print("Could not locate index.htm") return } do{ let currFrame = self.view.frame; let content = tryString(contentsOfFile:filePath) let formattedContent = String.init(format: content,currFrame.size.width,currFrame.size.height) let_= self.webView?.loadHTMLString(formattedContent, baseURL: URL.init(fileURLWithPath: Bundle(for: ChartViewController.self).bundlePath)) } catch{ print("Failed to load contents of index.html") } } |
9) That’s it ! Run the app and you should see the sample chart load …
A complete example that demonstrates how you can dynamically load chart data is available at https://github.com/rajagp/iOS_Highcharts_Sample.