Dries Buytaert:

After some research, I discovered that YouTube offers a privacy-enhanced way of embedding videos. Instead of linking to youtube.com, link to youtube-nocookie.com, and no data-collecting HTTP cookie will be sent. This is Google’s way of providing GDPR-compliant YouTube videos.

(via Daring Fireball)

I was completely unaware that this GDPR-compliant version of YouTube embeds were available. But, seeing as it makes no sense to use the standard embed when this one exists, I’ve made changes to my site so all YouTube embeds will automatically use the -nocookie version.

Just in case this helps anyone else add this to their blog, RavanH posted a code snippet on the WordPress.org forums to make WordPress shortcodes automatically convert YouTube embeds.

It’s been just under a year since I published my article on how to connect an Xcode project to a GitHub repository. Since then, Xcode has kept being updated with new Source Control features, and the guide started to break. So I’ve decided to start fresh and show how you can quickly and easily use GitHub to track your Xcode project.

The Xcode used for this guide was version 10.1.

We will first go through initialising a Git repository, finding the Source Control features in Xcode, and then either link it to an existing GitHub remote, or create one directly inside Xcode.

Initialising a Git Repository

You will need to make sure your project is inside a Git repository. The easiest way is to check the “Create Git repository on my Mac” checkbox when first creating the project, but you can also use the git init command¹ to create one inside the root folder.

Once your project is being tracked by Git, you will see your project in the Source Control pane on the left of Xcode. It’s the second icon from the left, and you can quickly access it using CMD + 2.

This shows any local branches, tags, and also any remote repositories you have set up, along with remote branches. So you’ll be able to use this pane, along with the Source Control option in the menu bar to manage your repository once it is set up.

Setting Up a Remote

From this stage you have two options, you can link this repository to an already existing remote you have set up, or you can use Xcode’s new tools to create a new one. Either option can be found by right-clicking on the Remotes folder.

I’ll go through both methods.

Using an Existing Remote

For this example, I created a blank repository on GitHub. Once a blank repository is created, they show you a few ways to initialise the repository. However the only thing you’ll need is the URL address inside the Quick setup section. For me, it’s https://github.com/chrishannah/Test-Existing-Remote.git .

So if you go back to Xcode, right click on Remotes, and select Add Existing Remote, a new window will appear from the top prompting for the location. You just need to paste in the URL you got from GitHub, and select Add.

Once you’ve done that, you should see the new remote appear in the Source Control pane, and you’ll be able to commit, push, pull, etc. from the menu bar in Xcode, along with the usual places.

Create New Remote

If you haven’t got a remote repository set up yet, this is the easiest way to do so, and you don’t even have to leave Xcode.

Like before, go back to the Source Control pane, right-click on Remotes, and select Create “Project Name” Remote. You’ll then be presented with a window where you can customise the new repository you will be creating.

First of all, you’ll need to connect your GitHub account if you haven’t already. To do this just click on the Account drop down menu, tap Add, and then enter your GitHub credentials.

You can then enter a repository name, which will also dictate the URL, an optional description, the visibility of the project, and name you will call the remote in Xcode. The default options are usually fine, although you may want to make the repository private. The last field, remote name, can be left as the default “origin. This is just a label you can give to the remote repository, and if you used multiple, it would be helpful to distinguish each of them. Origin is just the conventional name that most developers use.

Xcode will then create the repost on GitHub, and push your code. You should then see the new remote appear in the Source Control pane, and you’ll be able to commit, push, pull, etc. from the menu bar in Xcode.

You’ll also find your code on the remote repository on GitHub.

I hope you found this guide helpful. If not, then please let me know either in the comments below, or on Twitter where I’m @chrishannah.

Getting Started with UITableView: Populating Data #

10 March 2017

This article is part of a collection of articles about Swift Basics, where I try to explain different parts of Swift development in a more understandable way.

In most iOS applications, you will probably need to use a UITableView at some point. In this short guide, you will find out how to create a UITableView, and populate it with your own data.

UITableView

As Apple say in the documentation, “A table view displays a list of items in a single column.”. Basically, it’s a list of cells, that you can take complete control over. With a UITableView object, there are two ways in which you can control them. They are the UITableViewDelegate, and the UITableViewDataSource. The delegate is what manages the interactions on the table cells, such as selecting and reordering. The UITableViewDataSource is as you may of guessed, what controls the data that populates the table, and also configures the cells in the Table View. However in this guide, we will just be focussing on the DataSource, as this is all we need to populate a TableView with data.

Styles

There are various ways in which you can customise the style of the TableView manually, but there are two main styles that you can choose from in the InterfaceBuilder, “Grouped” or “Plain”. There aren’t many differences, but in the “Plain” style, each cell fills the Table, and the relevant header/footer float above the cells. However in the “Grouped” style, the sections are visually separated into groups, with the addition of a background colour.

Creating the Project

We’ll start with a new Xcode project. So create a new iOS project, and select the “Single View Application” template. Then you can give it a name, for this example I’m using “TableViewExample”.

Just make sure the Language is Swift, and the other options aren’t needed for this example. This will create all the necessary files, such as “AppDelegate.swift”, “ViewController.swift”, and “Main.storyboard”.

Putting a UITableView on the Screen

Click on the “Main.storyboard” file, and from the object library on the right, drag a Table View onto the view (There should only be the one).

Then to make sure it works on all iOS devices and screen sizes, we’ll set up the layout. Just drag the corners of the TableView so that it fills the view, but keeps the top status bar visible, it should automatically align. Select the Table View, and then open up the “Add New Constraints” view from the bottom right corner. It is the icon with a square, which has a vertical line either side.

Once you constraint view appears, select the four lines around the square at the top, while making sure each value is 0. This will simply make it fit to the edges on any screen size.

Configuring the UITableView

Now we need to configure the Table View so that we can manage it later on. So select the Table View, and then click to show the “Attributes Inspector” from the right sidebar.

The only values you need to change are:

• Content – Dynamic Prototypes
• Prototype Cells – 1
• Style – Grouped

All we are doing with these settings, is making the cells in the table dynamic, so that we can update them with live data later on. Then we set the style to grouped, so we can see each section better visually.

UITableViewCell

As we also want to populate the cells with some data later on, we will make use of the dynamic prototyping in Interface Builder, to design the cells.

Firstly we will set a “Reuse Identifier” for the cell, this is so that we can reuse the same cell prototype when loading the TableView. To do this, just select the cell (it may be easier to do this in the Document Outline to the left”, and while still showing the “Attributes Inspector”, set the Reuse Identifier to “PlainCell”.

Linking the UITableView to the ViewController

We will manage the Table View from the initial View Controller, so the next step is to set it as the DataSource of the Table. You can do this programatically, but for this example we will do it using Interface Builder. To do this, select the Table View, and then choose the “Connections Inspector” in the right sidebar.

From there, just click and drag from the open circle to the right of “delegate” and “dataSource” to the View Controller icon at the top of the view. Then in the “ViewController.swift” file, we will need to set the class to be the DataSource. Just replace the current class definition:

class ViewController: UIViewController {

To the following:

class ViewController: UIViewController, UITableViewDataSource {

It will show some errors right now, but that is just because we haven’t implemented the required functions yet.

Populating the Table View

We have the Table View set up in Interface Builder, and it’s linked to the View Controller, so now it’s time to populate it with real data. At the top of the View Controller class, just below the code you’ve just written, copy the below code:

let sections = ["Fruit", "Vegetables"]
let fruit = ["Apple", "Orange", "Mango"]
let vegetables = ["Carrot", "Broccoli", "Cucumber"]

This is just three arrays that will be used for the section headings, and the content of each of them.

UITableViewDataSource

To fill the table with data, we need to write four functions to do the following:

• Set the headings for each section.
• Set the total number of sections.
• Set the total number of rows in each section.
• Configure the individual cells with the relevant data.

Section Headings

We already defined the section headings before, so all we need to do here is to return the string for the associated section, which the function receives as an Int.

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, titleForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> String? {
    return sections[section]
}

Number of Sections

This is quite a simple method, and it just tells the TableView how many sections there are. We already have the section headings in an Array, so we can just return the count value of this.

func numberOfSections(in tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
return sections.count
}

Number of Rows

Very similar to the method above, but this time we have slightly more complexity in how we return the value of the number of rows. As this method is for every section, we first need to check which section it is for, and then return the count value of the relevant array.

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
  switch section {
  case 0:
    // Fruit Section
    return fruit.count
  case 1:
    // Vegetable Section
    return vegetables.count
  default:
    return 0
 }
}

Configure the Cell

The last part of populating the Table View, is to load the data into the cell. We do this by first creating a UITableViewCell object, by making use of the dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier:) function. This uses the Reuse Identifier we set earlier, to dynamically reuse one of the cells that have already been created. Then depending on the section that the cell is in, we set the text of the text label of the cell, to the value from the relevant array. After this, the cell is returned, and it is displayed.

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
  // Create an object of the dynamic cell "PlainCell"
  let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "PlainCell", for: indexPath)
  // Depending on the section, fill the textLabel with the relevant text
  switch indexPath.section {
  case 0:
    // Fruit Section
    cell.textLabel?.text = fruit[indexPath.row]
    break
  case 1:
    // Vegetable Section
    cell.textLabel?.text = vegetables[indexPath.row]
    break
  default:
    break
  }
// Return the configured cell
return cell
}

Results

If you run this project now, it should look like this:

Final Code

Here is the final code for the View Controller that we created:

class ViewController: UIViewController, UITableViewDataSource, UITableViewDelegate {
let sections = [“Fruit”, “Vegetables”]
let fruit = [“Apple”, “Orange”, “Mango”]
let vegetables = [“Carrot”, “Broccoli”, “Cucumber”]
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
}
// MARK: UITableViewDataSource
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, titleForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> String? {
return sections[section]
}
func numberOfSections(in tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
return sections.count
}
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
switch section {
case 0:
// Fruit Section
return fruit.count
case 1:
// Vegetable Section
return vegetables.count
default:
return 0
}
}
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
// Create an object of the dynamic cell “PlainCell”
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: “PlainCell”, for: indexPath)
// Depending on the section, fill the textLabel with the relevant text
switch indexPath.section {
case 0:
// Fruit Section
cell.textLabel?.text = fruit[indexPath.row]
break
case 1:
// Vegetable Section
cell.textLabel?.text = vegetables[indexPath.row]
break
default:
break
}
// Return the configured cell
return cell

}
}

You can find the example project on GitHub.

Congratulations! You’ve now developed an app that makes use of a UITableView, along with a UITableViewDataSource to dynamically populate data, and also to configure the UITableViewCell. As this is an ongoing series of articles, you can expect more guides on how to take this project even further.