Recent posts

Handle location and geocoding with SwiftUI

November 05, 2019  5 minute read  

I’m continuing on my Weather app research in SwiftUI. My next problem is this: How do I get the current location (as a longitude / latitude) and a place (like a city) in my app such that the UI is updated when location updates happen? It turns out that this is a fairly easy problem, but it does come with some knowledge that you just have to know. Here is the list: How can I update the UI based on programmatic changes to the value? How can I listen for location updates? How can I c...

Create a bubble background in SwiftUI

November 02, 2019  3 minute read  

I’m continuing to explore SwiftUI, trying to recreate user interfaces that I see on design labs. The latest one is a task list app, found on Uplabs, and created by Rudi Hartano. I liked the design so I decided to replicate it from the Adobe XD file that he provided. One of the pieces he uses is a bubble background: The Adobe XD file shows me that I can use a linear gradient between two colors. However, there are also two slightly translucent circles on the top of it. If I were in Andr...

Why SwiftUI might just convert me to an iOS developer

October 31, 2019  9 minute read  

Confession time. I hated iOS development. First, there was Objective-C (which was a nightmare of epic proportions for cryptic syntax), then there was the Storyboards. Both of them forced you into using what is quite possibly the worst IDE on the market today (XCode), all so you could fit into the Apple ecosystem walled garden, where everything is controlled. Then Swift came along, so I took another look. I loved the direction that Swift was going, but Storyboards and the unintuitive IDE ...

Deploying an Azure Function App with Terraform

October 23, 2019  7 minute read  

You may have caught this from my previous blog posts, but I like automated deployments. I like something where I can run one command and magic happens, resulting in my whole deployment changing to a new state. I’ve recently been looking around at options for Azure, checking out Serverless Framework, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), and others. My favorite thus far has been Terraform. These are the instructions for deploying a basic Azure Function app with TypeScript code from start to finish.

Validating permissions on Android with Kotlin

October 07, 2019  2 minute read  

I’m continuing my educational coding exercise, developing a new photo sharing app. Recently, I completed my user authentication and registration process and I’m now quite happy with it, so I moved on to taking photographs. I’ve got an activity with a toolbar and a floating action button: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/r...