Understanding Declarative Syntax

In this chapter, you'll learn about the core fundamentals of the declarative syntax. You'll be able to identify and understand the theory behind it and the part it plays in SwiftUI development. We'll look specifically at how the syntax is written and how easily it can be intercepted and edited in a live debugging environment, all within Xcode. We'll finish off by going deeper into the structure of the syntax and understand how it all binds together. By the end of this chapter, you'll be able to fully understand what advantages are on offer, along with how to comfortably write a basic UI using declarative syntax.

Without declarative syntax, there would be no SwiftUI, or it would simply be another UIKit forcing users to learn a new framework with the same base language. Due to this, it is important to learn the fundamentals...

Brady Murphy Aug 20, 2020

Before I get into my review, I want to state that I was asked to read this book and give a 100% genuine review of the content within it. With that being said, I promise to be genuine and give you my honest feedback on the pedagogy and content of the material. I will state that I taught SwiftUI development at a very large university, so I have firsthand seen what does and doesn't work.PLEASE NOTE: This book goes over SwiftUI 1.0. Since the release of 2.0, there is a few teachings in this book that are outdated, but I believe at its core, the content is timeless.What I like:This book contains fantastic breadth to it and focuses on topics, like MVVM, that really need to be honed in early on as a developer get's into using SwiftUI. They cover everything from using maps, creating forms, using animations, etc. All of the essential "atoms" that are needed to create a decently complex iOS application are discussed in this book. I also really liked that they started off by having developers create a view in interface builder, which drives the elegance and beauty that SwiftUI presents to developers once they realize that they can create 10x the amount of work in nearly the same amount of code or less.I also think they do a great job with examples. I believe examples are the core of any teaching program and they must be efficient for the student to be able to get the example running fast and allow them to mess around to see how different code pieces affect the UI. In my opinion, they do exactly that. They provide code that can be copied and pasted fairly easily and then provide screenshots displaying the UI of how it should look on your screen.Lastly, I really appreciate that they encourage developers to start reading apples' documentation, and also provide outside resources for further reading in cases the reader would like to learn more depth about a specific chapter. Being able to read apples' documentation is vital for any developer, and they do a very good job of ingraining students to go look at protocols and types directly at the source before going to google or stack overflow.Things I maybe didn't like:I really didn't like that there wasn't a "challenge" at the end of chapters. For instance, some mini projects or assignments to test what you learned during that chapter. I think this is the one big missing piece of this book in my opinion. They do offer end of the chapter questions, but I believe small assignments where developers can test what they REALLY know and put their knowledge to practical use would be great.The second thing that I wish was more pertinent early on in the book, although I could just be a picky developer, is testing. It's the very last chapter in the book and I believe it needs to be talked about right after the MVVM architecture is introduced. Writing testable code with protocols and dependency injection is essential to writing clean and testable SwiftUI code. Sadly, most readers will look over this section since it's the last in the book and will not create a solid foundation early on.Overall:I would recommend buying this book and pairing it with a side project that you have in mind. This will allow you to add functionality to the project and really test what you know as you're learning it. I think they do a phenomenal job explaining the information, but also don't hold your hand too much. Congrats on the awesome book!

Amazon Verified review

HELLO Sep 15, 2020

When I got to the end of chapter four I was very excited about the rest of the book. So far the explanations have been clear and all of the steps needed were included by the author. However, things started getting wonky with chapter 5. At first I thought it was my own errors, but it became clear there are some deficiencies in the later chapters. I've made it to chapter nine of fifteen and it has continued to be problematic. Steps are left out, code samples get repeated for no reason. This has devolved into frequent references to the coded "solutions", which just leads me to skip to the end of the chapter. At chapter four I would have rated this books as a five, but as I continue I can only rate it as average. UPDATE, by chapter 9 there were so many errors that it was pointless to follow the instructions and I gave up. Rating from 3 to 1. Again, started great, then it seems the author or editor ran out of energy to proof the book for errors. My advice, download the source coder from the publisher website and review that, the book mostly gets in the way.

Michael1260 May 25, 2021

Bof, un livre bourré d'erreurs de typos, des passages laissés sous silence. Je ne recommande pas ce livre.

B. Shepard Aug 26, 2020

Full of typos and errors, it is also geared toward more knowledgeable Swift coders.

Amazon Customer Oct 03, 2022

Book started off with a great deal of potential, getting a few chapters in, the errors, mainly relating to the descriptive text being unrelated to the sample code with respect to object and variable names became increasingly apparent. I would like to see an update to this book with these issues addressed as it has the potential to be very good but should have been properly proof read before publication.

Learn SwiftUI: An introductory guide to creating intuitive cross-platform user interfaces using Swift 5

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Learn SwiftUI

Understanding Declarative Syntax

Technical requirements

What is declarative syntax?

Visualizing declarative syntax

Getting started with SwiftUI in Xcode

Nesting and decoration

Modifiers

Imperative syntax

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Questions

Further reading

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Learn SwiftUI: An introductory guide to creating intuitive cross-platform user interfaces using Swift 5

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Key benefits

Description

Who is this book for?

What you will learn

Product Details

What do you get with Print?

Contact Details

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Table of Contents

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