As an iOS engineer, you’ve likely used both SwiftUI and UIKit for building iOS interfaces. SwiftUI, the newer framework, offers a declarative approach similar to Android's Jetpack Compose, while UIKit, the older method, relies on a drag-and-drop style akin to Android XML.
Choosing between SwiftUI and UIKit depends largely on the iOS versions you need to support. SwiftUI is available only from iOS 13 onwards, so if you need to support older versions, UIKit is your option.
Here’s a brief comparison to help you decide which framework suits your needs best.
Key parts and configuration designs
To fabricate excellent and responsive UIs for their iOS applications, engineers can use UIkit's extensive variety of UI parts while following specific plan designs, as you will see beneath:
View regulators
As the name proposes, view regulators are objects used to oversee UI sees by answering client input. They handle occasions, for example, button taps, signals, and passing information to the perspectives. They additionally go about as a delegate between the application's information model and the perspectives, as well as organizing with different articles in the application.
Here is an illustration of an Objective-C skeleton view regulator:
Delegates and data sources
Delegates and data sources is a common design pattern in UIkit for iOS app development. It entails having a data source—an object responsible for providing the data displayed in a view—and a delegate—an object responsible for handling events or actions occurring in a view.
3 benefits of UIkit
The customary methodology, UIkit, has been the go-to structure for iOS designers for quite a long time. Its proceeded with prominence is because of many elements.
An experienced and stable structure
UIkit has been around since iPhoneOS 2.0, so it has had an immense early advantage. It has likewise figured out how to develop above and beyond the years, with mixes with different iOS center structures for illustrations and movements. These consistent, slow enhancements have prompted a steady and dependable structure.
An extensive variety of UI parts
UIkit has acquired a vigorous arrangement of pre-constructed UI parts — consider buttons, search bars, and tables — that tackle most difficulties engineers face while building iOS UIs. This restricts the need to make custom UI plan components. A large portion of them are essentially currently present.
Broad documentation and local area support
UIkit's boundless reception and its long presence have seen it gain an enormous and dynamic local area of designers. The documentation and assets accessible to you are impressive, starting with Apple's true documentation and going past to YouTube instructional exercises and different web journals.
SwiftUI: A Modern Approach to Designing iOS User Interfaces
SwiftUI, introduced by Apple in 2019 with iOS 13, offers a modern, declarative approach for building user interfaces across Apple’s ecosystem, including iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It leverages the Swift programming language to enable developers to create visually appealing and responsive UIs with minimal code.
Key Features
Declarative Syntax: SwiftUI allows you to specify what the UI should look like rather than detailing the steps to achieve it. The framework takes care of rendering and managing the view.
Reactive Nature: SwiftUI automatically updates the UI when underlying data changes, reducing the need for additional code.
Built-in Views and Layouts: A rich set of pre-built components and layout tools simplifies the creation of adaptive and responsive interfaces.
Example
Here's how you can display an image and text in a vertical stack using SwiftUI:
3 benefits of SwiftUI
SwiftUI brags a ton includes that an iOS engineer would have no desire to be without. We should investigate a couple of the forces to be reckoned with.
Simplified code and easier maintenance
SwiftUI's definitive language structure and receptive model improve on the code expected to assemble responsive UIs. Since you just have to characterize the UI and not the execution subtleties, how much code you need to compose is negligible and has a natural sentence structure.
Remember, as currently referenced, SwiftUI handles refreshes on information changes consequently. That is even less code that you need to compose and keep up with.
Improved design-to-code workflow
With see and live altering highlights, there's no distinction between the code you compose and the presence of your UI. You can approve your result continuously. SwiftUI's pre-constructed parts make it simpler and quicker to carry out plan into code, giving a more incorporated and consistent plan to-code work process.
Automatic support for dark mode and accessibility
Utilizing SwiftUI's colorScheme property, you can undoubtedly turn among light and dim varieties on your application's UI. SwiftUI consequently handles the fundamental hard work to draw out your ideal outcome. Recollect SwiftUI's modifiers that we referenced before? Remember that you can utilize those to adjust the presence of perspectives or add more properties to facilitate the openness of the UI.
2 Disadvantages of SwiftUI
Despite the fact that SwiftUI is a cutting edge system with highlights that loan themselves to basic, modern plan, it actually has a couple of downsides you ought to consider.
Restricted similarity with more established iOS adaptations
SwiftUI was presented in iOS 13. It can't be utilized on gadgets running iOS 12 or prior. That is not a unimportant worry for engineers focusing on more established iOS adaptations.
Luckily, SwiftUI can in any case be utilized close by UIkit. Utilizing the two systems, designers can keep supporting more established renditions.
SwiftUI vs. UIkit: What’s the verdict?
It’s time for a more detailed head-to-head comparison! Let’s compare SwiftUI vs. UIkit according to factors such as device compatibility, documentation, required UI components, target iOS version, and a few others.
SwiftUI vs. UIKit: Choosing the Right Framework
Choosing between SwiftUI and UIKit depends on your app’s needs. SwiftUI offers a modern, declarative approach with live previews and reactive programming, while UIKit provides a robust set of UI components, a large community, and support for older iOS versions.
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