2016-08-05

Libraries can make your life so much easier when you are coding for iOS. With all of the work that apple has put in to make programming for iOS as easy as possible, there is still a lot of room to be able to use third-party tools to improve your code quality.

What tools? Well:

General Libraries

CloudRail: CloudRail (our own iOS solution) is a library that allows you to access a range of Cloud Service, including Dropbox, Instagram, Twitter, Drive, etc. What is particularly cool about CloudRail is that when you use multiple services in the same interface/category, e.g. Dropbox and OneDrve, all of the methods and functions are shared between the services

UberKit: Allows your iOS application to connect up to the Uber API, allowing you to book taxis for people, let people access their accounts, etc. What is particularly great about Uber as an API is that they offer a bounty. If your user books a cab using Uber, you get an affiliate marketer revenue for this transaction being from your API

Medium SDK: Allows you to access all of the features of the ever popular Medium Blogging platform. Perfect for syncing up posts made in multiple places

Animation Libraries

Pop: An animation frame work that makes it really easy to create interactions based on physics in your application. Perfect for creating effects that seem to pop out at the user

IBAnimatable: Allows you to design, innovate, prototype, and create Interaction, UI, and animations for iOS without code. Perfect for when your graphics guy or girl is not a coder

Apple TV

Voucher: Create tvOS apps that are able to authenticate just as easy as those on iOS can

Swift-GA-Tracker-for-Appple-tvOS: Add Google Analytics tracking to your apple application. Perfect for finding the areas of your application that need to improve, as well as gives you full usage statistics

Analytics

GTrack: A lightweight wrapper for objective C that allows you to use the Google Analytics SDK easily for getting advanced app information.

MixPanel: An advanced analytics tracking platform

Code Quality

SwiftLint: A linter. That is, a tool that forces correct Swift coding conventions and styles. Invaluable if you are working as part of a team as everyone will be working with standardized code

BugLife: Not just a Pixar reference. Allows for advanced Bug Reporting in iOS applications. Because users don’t always give you all the information you need to debug

Command Line

ColorizeSwift: Allows for terminal string styling within Swift

Colors: Allows you to set up terminal colours within Swift for easy Terminal working

Charts

FSLineChart: A line chart library for iOS

SwiftCharts: An easy way to create SwiftCharts, with customizable features

Core Data

MagicalRecord: Allows for incredibly easy fetching of core data throughout your iOS application

Sync: An easy way to sync Core Data and JSON string

Database

Zephyr: Allows you to easily sync up NS User Defaults through iCLoud

SwiftMongoDB: Allows you to work with a Mongo Database through iOS

Data Structures

ChangeSet: Gives you the power to make minimal edits from one change set to another

Dollar: The power of tools like Lo-Dash and Underscore.js. But in Swift

Date & Time

AFDateHelpter Easily convey to and from NSDate within Swift

iso-8601-date-formatter A Cocoa format that allows you to easily convert to and from ISO-8601 formated strings

Files

FileKit: Easy File Management in Swift

FileBrowser: An alternative to FileKit for Swift

Functional Programing

Oriole: A utility belt that uses the Swift 2.0 Prototypical conventions. This library allows you to easily do things with your iOS applications that would be impossible manually

OptionalExtensions: Uses the Swift Framework to allow extensions to the optional type

Games

Sage: Allows you to easily add a cross-platform chess system. Perfect for learning libraries, or for display to users during long loading times

Gestures

Sensitive: The easy way to add gestures to your swift iOS application

SwiftyGestureRecongition: Aids with protyping UIGestureRecongisers in XCode Playgounds

Graphics

PKCoreTechniques: A core library that allows for the easily manipulation of graphics in your code

InkKit: Drawing and Geometry made incredibly easy for iOS

Bluetooth

Discovery: Get data from nearby Bluetooth Devices easily

Bluetonium: Map Bluetooth protocols easily within Swift

Camera

SCRecorder: A Vine-like engine that allwos for recording, filters, slow motion and segement editing

FasttCamera: A fast and easy camera framework for iOS

iBeacon

Proxitee: Easily creation location aware applications within iOS

BeaconEmitter: Turns Macs into BeconEmitters

Location

IngeoSDK: An always on geo-service for iOS

LocationPicker: An easy to use, customizable location picker for your application

Layout

MisterFusion: An easy to use AutoLayout Swift DSL. Simple and clean syntax

EasyPeasy: An easy way to build and create Auto Layout constraints

Localization

Hodor: Doesn’t hold a door. But instead is a very simple solution to localize your iOS application

Transai: A command line tool that helps with the management of string localization files

Logging

CocoaLumberjack: An easy, flexible, fast, and powerful framework for logging for both Mac and iOS. Perfect for cross platform compatibility

SwiftyTextTable: Create Text Tables. Easily

Maps

Route Me: An open source map library for iOS

GEOSwift: A geographic engine for swift

Math

Euler: Gives you customer operations that allow you to make use of Mathematical Notation within Swift

VectorMath: Makes performing 2D and 3D vector functions simple.

Audio

AudioPlayer: A syntax and feature sugar over AVPlayer. It plays your audio files (local & remote)

SubtleVolume: Replace the system volume pop up with a more subtle indicator

GIF

SwiftGif: A small UIImage extension with gif support

YYImage: Image framework for iOS to display/encode/decode animated WebP, APNG, GIF, and more

Image

SDWebImage: Asynchronous image downloader with cache support with an UIImageView category

Concorde: Create, download and retrieve progressive JPEGs

Video

XCDYouTubeKit: YouTube video player for iOS, tvOS and OS X

AVAnimator: An open source iOS native library that makes it easy to implement non-trivial video/audio enabled apps

Messaging

Smooch: Simple, lightweight SDKs and interfaces that enable customer messaging inside your apps and websites

SlackTextViewController: A drop-in UIViewController subclass with a growing text input view and other useful messaging features

Machine Learning

Swift-AI: Highly optimized Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning library written in Swift

Swift-Brain: Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning data structures and Swift algorithms for future iOS development. Bayes theorem, Neural Networks, and more AI

Networking

Overcoat: Small but powerful library that makes creating REST clients simple and fun

ROADFramework: Attributed-oriented approach for interacting with web services. The framework has built-in json and xml serialization for requests and responses and can be easily extensible

Push Notifications

Orbiter: Allows you to register an iOS device to receive push notifications

Knuff: A push notification debugging service

Passbook

passbook: Passbook gem let’s you create pkpass for passbook iOS 6+

Dubai: Generate and Preview Passbook Passes

Payments

Caishen: Payment Card UI & Validator for iOS

PatronKit: Framework to add patronage to your apps

Products

Import.io: Instantly Turn Web Pages into Data

Tapglue: Build social products and a activity feed with a few lines of code

Reactive Programming

RxSwift: Reactive Programming in Swift

RxBluetoothKit: iOS & OSX Bluetooth library for RxSwift

Reflection

JSONNeverDie: Auto reflection tool from JSON to Model, user friendly JSON encoder / decoder, aims to never die

SwiftKVC: Key-Value Coding (KVC) for native Swift classes and structures

Regex

Regex: Swift µframework providing an NSRegularExpression-backed Regex type

Cocoapods-Keys: A key value store for storing environment and application keys

Simple-Touch: Very simple swift wrapper for Biometric Authentication Services (Touch ID) on iOS

Encryption

Themis: High-level crypto library, providing basic asymmetric encryption, secure messaging with forward secrecy and secure data storage, supports iOS/OS X, Android and different server side platforms

Obfuscator-iOS: String Obfuscation for app’s executable file

Keychain

Valet: Securely store data in the iOS or OS X Keychain without knowing a thing about how the Keychain works

Locksmith: A powerful, protocol-oriented library for working with the keychain in Swift

Text

Twitter Text Obj: Easily Implement the Twitter text processing library.

DTRichTextEditor: A rich text editor compatable with iOS apps.

Font

FontBlaster: Load any custom font you want into your iOS application

SwiftFontName Complements the original OD font library with custom fonts perfect for applications

URL Scheme

WAAppRouting: Routes network in a better way than the default implementation. All in one line with the controller stack preserved

Compass: Allows you to set up a central navigation system within your application

User Interface

FlatUIKit: Flat UI components for IOS for stunning looking applications

MotionBlur: Easily add motion blur effects to your iOS animations

Activity Indicator

iOS Circle Progress Bar: Allows your application to become more user-friendly with an apple style progress indicator

MRProgress: A collection of different drop in components for iOS

Alerts

Notie: In app applications made for swift. Customizable buttons and imputable text fields all being option

CustomizableActionSheet: Create a customizable action sheet within your iOS application

Buttons

SSBouncyButton: Create bouncy button style effects within your iOS applications

DynamicButton: DynamicButtons within iOS. Create animated flat buttons and add a lot of flare to your applications.

Calendar

GLCalendarView: Customizable calendar with the power to also set a custom date range picker within your iOS application

Daysquare: Calendar Control for iOS applications

Form

Form: Build forms in iOS. The flexible way

APValidators: Validate in iOS, effortlessly

Keyboard

NGKeyboardTracker: Objective C Library that allows you track the keyboard within your iOS applications.

YYKeyboardManager: Track and access keyboard animations.

Label

TTTAttributedLabel: Create attribute labels as opposed to UILabels.

GitchLabel: Create a Glitch Effect UI label for iOS.

Menu

RESideMenu: Create a slide menu effect within iOS in your application

MenuItemKit: UIMenuItem with image and block(closure)

MKDropdownMenu: A Dropdown Menu for iOS with many customizable parameters to suit any needs.

Modal Transition

ZOZolaZoomTransition: Animate the total view hierarchy in your iOS application.

Navigation Bar

TLYShyNavBar: Create auto scrolling navigation bars within your iOS application.

LTNavigationBar: Change the appearance of the navigation bar dynamically.

Popup

KLCPopup: A simple and flexible class for presenting custom views as a pop up in iOS

MMPopupView: Pop-up based view(e.g. alert sheet), can easily customize

Rating Stars

StarryStars: Display and edit ratings with an iOS GUI library

HCSStarRatingView: ObjectiveC Simple Star Rating

Slider

ASValueTrackingSlider: Sliders in iOS made easy with a subclass.

MMSegmentSlider: Animated slider for iOS with plenty of customizable segments.

Tab Bar

FoldingTabBar: Library for crating an easy folding tab bar.

TabPageViewController: Create a paging view controller with a scroll tab view.

Utility

ReflectableEnum: Reflection for enumerations.

EKAlgorithms: Use CS algorithms & data structures in Objective-C.

WebSocket

SocketRocket: An objective C client library that conforms to standards

SecretSocks: Create secure SOCK sockets.

Server

CocoaHTTPServer: A lightweight coco sever for HTTP connections via iOS.

Kitura: Webframework for Swift. By IBM.

With all of these libraries. And all of the power of CloudRail, you will be able to build amazing iOS applications.

The post Best iOS Libraries for Developers appeared first on CloudRail.

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