Swiftlet Utilities

Swiftlet Utilities provides several useful functions that are common across many apps written in SwiftUI and Xcode. These include features such as testing to see if an app can connect to the internet, etc.

NOTE: Swiftlet Utilities is a replacement for our Action Utilities library specifically designed to work with SwiftUI. Several other features have been modernized and improved as well.

Additionally, many built-in types (such as Color, String and Data) have been extended with useful features such as converting a color to and from a hex string and moving images easily between Data and String types to support Swift’s Codable protocol.

Swiftlet Utilities are support on iOS, tvOS, watchOS and macOS.

Installation

Swift Package Manager (Xcode 11 and above)

1. Select File > Swift Packages > Add Package Dependency… from the File menu.
2. Paste https://github.com/Appracatappra/SwiftletUtilities.git in the dialog box.
3. Follow the Xcode’s instruction to complete the installation.

Why not CocoaPods, or Carthage, or blank?

Supporting multiple dependency managers makes maintaining a library exponentially more complicated and time consuming.

Since, the Swift Package Manager is integrated with Xcode 11 (and greater), it’s the easiest choice to support going further.

General Extensions

General Utilities provide several, general utility classes to handle thing such as network connectivity.

Provided Extensions

The following extensions are provided:

• HTMLEntity - Decodes the given string converting any HTML Entity codes into their resulting characters.
• Reachability - Test to see if we have an active network connection.

Hardware Extensions

Hardware Utilities provide commonly used information about the device an app is running on such as the device type (for example iPhoneX), the OS version (for example iOS 11.1) and if the app can connect to the internet.

Provided Extensions

The following extensions are provided:

• AppleHardwareType - Used to convert an Apple device model name (in the form iPhone10,3) to a human readable form (such as iPhoneX). This enum works with the HardwareInformation class to get the type of device the app is running on.
• HardwareInformation - Defines a set of convenience properties and functions when working on Apple devices, such as checking the device model name (iPhone10,3), getting the device type (iPhoneX), getting the OS version (iOS 11.1), the current device orientation and internet connection state:
  • isPhone - Returns true if the app is running on an iPhone, else returns false.
  • isPad - Returns true if the app is running on an iPad, else returns false.
  • isTV - Returns true if the app is running on an Apple TV, else returns false.
  • isCar - Returns true if the app is running on a CarPlay connected device, else returns false.
  • isWatch - Returns true if the app is running on an Apple Watch, else returns false.
  • isMac - Returns true if the app is running on a Mac laptop or desktop, else returns false.
  • modelName - Returns the model name of the device the app is running on. For example, iPhone10,3 or iPhone10,6 for the iPhone X.
  • deviceType - Returns the human-readable type of the device that the app is running on (for example iPhoneX) or unknown if the type cannot be discovered.
  • osVersion - Returns the version number (for example iOS 11.1) of the OS installed on the device that the app is running on.

Swiftlet Extensions

Swiftlet Extensions provide several useful features to common, built-in SwiftUI and Swift data types such as converting Color to/from hex strings (for example #FF0000), creating Image instances from Base64 encoded strings stored in Data objects and encoding Images as Base64 strings or Data objects.

SwiftUI Examples:

// Assign a color from a string
let color: Color ~= "#FF0000"

// Initialize a color from a hex string
let green = Color(fromHex: "00FF00")

// Convert color to a hex string
let white = Color.white.toHex()

Provided Extensions

The following extensions are provided:

• Color - Extends Color to support the Action Data controls and adds convenience methods for working with colors in a Codable, Encodable or Decodable class.
• Data - Extends Data to support the Action Data controls and adds convenience methods for working with data properties in a Codable, Encodable or Decodable class.
• Image - Extends Image to support the Action Data controls and adds convenience methods for working with image properties in a Codable, Encodable or Decodable class.
• String - Extends String to support the Action Data controls and adds convenience methods for working with Image and Color properties in a Codable, Encodable or Decodable class.
• Array - Extends Array with new functions for working with collections.
• Double - Extends Double with several useful features.
• Int - Extends Int with several useful features.
• @Published - Allows properties that are marked @Published and allows them to be Codable with Encode and Decode conformance.
• View - Conditionally apply modifiers depending on the target operating system.