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The Swift Package Manager coming with Swift 5.5 / Xcode 13 now supports the @main attribute. We can use that to build apps using just SwiftPM, no Xcode involved! Let’s use it to build a Cowtastic app! The @main attribute was actually...

At WWDC 2021 Apple presented DocC, a way to create Swift documentation and tutorials right within Xcode. We are going to look at the documentation archive produced, the good&bad and how to generate a static website. TLDR: Just...

The secret Apple doesn’t want you to know about: It has been shipping an async/await runtime for years. Let’s have a look on how to use it from within Swift! In another episode of “forums are awful”, people go at length to complain...

Today we are going to embed and run WebAssembly (Wasm) modules in a Swift program. Using Wasmer, an embeddable runtime for Wasm, wrapped in a simple Swift API. While it isn’t used that much in production just yet, you likely have heard...

XML-RPC is a funny little protocol from 1998 to call HTTP endpoints. Due to its wide availability across different languages it can still be useful. We are going to have a look at XML-RPC and write a small client and server in...

The IETF is working on the Transport Services (TAPS) API, intended as a replacement for BSD sockets. Apple’s Network.framework includes a Swift implementation of the new API. Let’s look how echo and HTTP servers can be done using...

Instead of the overdue announcement of “iCloud functions”, Apple’s Tom Doron was showing Swift deployment on AWS Lambda at WWDC 2020. We’ll explain how Lambda can be used and introduce swift lambda deploy. Intro: Amazon Web Services...

Slack can be enhanced by 3rd party developers with interactive dialogs and dynamic, self-updating, messages. With Buttons, Pickers, TextFields and more. Using SwiftBlocksUI these widgets can be built declaratively, “SwiftUI...

How did Shrugs.app happen? Almost two years ago (Aug 2018) the Interwebs held their recurring discussion of the gigantanormous amounts of resources the Slack Electron app consumed. Jigawatts of memory for a simple chat client, the GPU...

SwiftNIO is the library to build backend servers in the Swift programming language. As part of this article we are going to write our own tiny, Node like web framework using NIO: µExpress. Updated for NIO2/Xcode 11. This article is an...

Direct to SwiftUI is an adaption of an old WebObjects technology called Direct to Web. This time for Apple’s new framework: SwiftUI. Instant CRUD apps, configurable using a declarative rule system, yet fully integrated with...

SwiftUI supports a feature called the Environment. It allows the injection of values into child views without the need to explicitly pass them along. SwiftUI Rules adds a declarative rule system, think: Cascading Style Sheets for...

As an update to Migrate Private GIT Repositories to GCrypt, let’s have a look at another option for encrypted git cloud storage: Keybase. Which has an ever expanding set of features, and that happens to include Encrypted git. Skip...

Beginning of the month Apple announced SwiftUI at the WWDC 2019. A single “cross platform”, “declarative” framework used to build tvOS, macOS, watchOS and iOS UIs. SwiftWebUI is bringing that to the Web ✔️ Disclaimer: This is a toy...

Creating Kitura endpoints using the tools provided by IBM (the app or kitura init) is quite inconvenient. Using SwiftXcode you can do the same straight from Xcode, w/o touching the shell during development. We’ll show you how! Update...

After Shell commands as Swift functions and the Swift/ObjC Bridge, Part 3 in our quest to find a useful application for the Swift 5 Dynamic Callable feature: Mustache templates as a function (short: MaaF). This one may actually make some...