What is SwiftUI?

Introduction

In 2019, Apple inc. introduced a new framework called SwiftUI for building the interfaces for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. This has proved to be the most simple, exceptionally creative platform to build user interfaces for all Apple devices, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

With this UI, it is quite easy and more innate to write code. For a long time, developers have been confused when it comes to choosing between using storyboardsA storyboard is simply the graphical representation of an iOS application's user interface that displays the contents of the screens and the links between those screens. or building the user interface of an application programmatically. The advent of SwiftUI has cleared it up quite resourcefully.

A storyboard is a graphic representation of an iOS application's user interface that displays content pages and the connection between those pages.What is SwiftUI?

SwiftUI is a programming language that lets you create unique applications using Swift. Although SwiftUI is a new framework, it doesn't feel much different to a developer already familiar with Swift programming using AppKit and UIKit.

Before SwiftUI, developers had to use storyboards and interface builders using Xcode to build iOS apps. They'd drag around elements on the screen and link them up with the source code. But today, if we want to create a user interface, then SwiftUI offers a cross-platform to create applications using lesser code.

There are some additional tools that you may use. SwiftUI allows us to integrate the following:

  • Gestures
  • Animations
  • Custom views

The framework stands out because it supports built-in core technologies such as adaptive layouts and accessibility, etc. The goal of Apple with SwiftUI is to help developers build extraordinary applications.

Imperative vs. declarative framework

There seems to be an argument among the iOS development community between using SwiftUI or UIkit. The most important difference between the two is how we write code.

It would be harder to build a user interface programmatically (without the storyboards) when using UIKit. But that's not all. UIKit is referred to as an imperative framework, which entails merely specifying what needs to be done.

However, SwiftUI is a declarative framework, which means we'll just declare something that we expect to happen. Don't worry if this sounds confusing to you. It means that in both the frameworks code is structured differently. So let's understand it with an example.

Code example

// Imperative Programming
let arr = [7,8,9,10,12,5]
var even: [int]=[]
for j in 0..<arr.count{
    if arr[j]%2 ==0
    { 
        even.append(arr[j])
    }
}

//Declarative
let _even_=arr.filter {$0%2==0}

We can safely say that each project may have an advantage when it comes to UIKit or SwiftUI but in the near future, Apple will deprecate UIKit because SwiftUI is newer and optimized for the devices being released now or in the future.

Benefits vs. Drawbacks

Advantages

Disadvantages

It has fewer lines of code.

You can only use the latest version of SwiftUI.

It is easier to learn.

There is not much help on the internet because SwiftUI is comparatively new.

SwiftUI can be used with UIKit with the help of UIHostingController.

When using SwiftUI, the developer isn't allowed to examine the view hierarchy in Xcode previews.

In this framework, merge conflicts are less likely because Swift source code makes up pretty much all of SwiftUI.

There are still a lot of features which are only available in UIKit.

SwiftUI is still evolving at a rapid pace.

There is a limited set of User Interface components.

It offers live preview making it easier to see the output of the code in real-time without the need to build it.

The functionality of keyboard handling is still not available in SwiftUI.

Conclusion

Whenever a new framework is introduced to the market, people are skeptical about whether to use it or not. Accordingly, SwiftUI is still a little new and we may not be able to apply it to our own existing projects but according to Apple, it is the future of user interface development across all their platforms.

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