It has been more than a decade and I have been producing high-quality iOS apps to my end clients. Now being a developer, I completely understand how the newbies have this tendency to jump straight into coding the core logic of the app, which is quite boring! But it is something where all the fun lies, do you want to see how?
In my ten years of career, I have learned that hard way if you devote some time upfront to set up your project correctly, then you will definitely save tonnes of time in the future. Many times professional do not realize the fact and tend to work as a solo developer, calling themselves one man army. But the fact is that most of the great ios apps are developed by teams. And of course, the following post emphasizes on how to come with a successful iOS app as a team.
Setup the coding style
Coding style guide mainly refers to the style and conventions to follow before coding in a specific kind of a language. It includes things like whether to use tabs or spaces, how to name variables or some conventions specific to a language (like in Swift whether to use Classes or Structs). When it comes to coding, there is nothing wrong or right. All you can do is, set up the project in your very own style but make sure that the entire team follows the guidelines and works accordingly.
What’s your app architecture?
Another important step to consider right before jumping to a code is to fix the architecture of your app. After all, a good architecture is something that will make your app more testable, easier in terms of understanding and reduce its’ maintenance cost.
Set up your app folder structure
To keep all those hundreds of source files from ending up in the same directory, it’s a good idea to set up some folder structure depending on your architecture. For instance, you can use the following:
├─ Models
├─ Views
├─ Controllers (or ViewModels, if your architecture is MVVM)
├─ Stores
├─ Helpers
First of all, create them as groups (little yellow “folders”) within the group with your project’s name in Xcode’s Project Navigator. Then, for each and every group link them to an actual directory in your project path by opening their File Inspector on the right, hitting the little gray folder icon, and creating a new subfolder with the name of the group in your project directory. No matter how minor it may seem, but it will definitely make your app more structured and easier to understand.
Proper Schemes
Schemes map a series of actions ranging from hit the Run to Test, Profile, Analyze or Archive in order to target and build configuration.
Proper Certificates and Provisioning Profiles
No matter how painful it seems to be, this step, in particular, is very important for testing and distributing iOS app for developers.
So that’s all for now! Keep watching the space to know more!