The powerful influence of Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices can be seen in the statistics and the number of apps downloaded each day for different iOS devices. iOS has gained immense popularity among developers as it offers awesome opportunities for making money. It helps developers to pour their creativity into apps through a wide range of development tools in the form of XCode, Interface Builder, Objective-C programming, and, of course, “libraries.”
Being an iOS developer, when you start building iPhone and iPad apps
Being an iOS developer, when you start building iPhone and iPad apps, you may need to carry out a lot of work to get your app developed and running. However, it doesn’t make sense to implement what you want in iOS from scratch every time, and it is not necessary even to reinvent the wheel again and again. Fortunately, there are many libraries available that provide useful functionality and make your life easy.
Are you developing an iOS app and looking for a set of libraries that can come in handy? Your search ends here! In this post, we’re going to cover the top 10 iOS libraries that developers can use to build innovative apps with great functionality. Of course, you may not need all of them to build your app, but the list contains some of the most useful libraries that will be useful in your current or future projects.
1. MBProgressHUD
This is nothing but a progress indicator library. Of course, Apple applications have a great progress display, but sometimes you may need to interrupt the user with information. This library provides some additional options, like e visual indicator and a progress completion message. If you wish to integrate it with your app, then it is quite easy, as you will have to add just a few files.
2. GCDiscreetNotificationView
If you want to highlight specific information without interrupting the user’s ongoing interactions, then the GCDiscreetNotificationView library is all you need. It will help you display information to the users in a non-intrusive way. It is a simple and elegant library that can be used by developers without any further detailing.
3. GPUImage
If the app you are developing is all about images and video processing, GPUImage is a great framework to deal with it. It helps you deal with images, video processing, or live camera while making it faster. It is faster than Apple’s Core Image and also provides support for custom filters and IOS 4. However, when it comes to the features, it lacks some of the advanced features that you will find in Core Image, but for most developers, it is a choice worth exploring.
4. RestKit
RestKit is nothing but an Objective-C framework that is intended to simplify and speed up interaction with RESTful web services in iOS. It is developed to cut off the coding and effort for developers trying to get their app integrated with a REST remote API. Apart from this, this library can also perform some network-related tasks, parse the results, and map the results into your own customer classes.
5. TestFlight
This is a service that helps you distribute your beta builds to testers. Its services are quite impressive for the developers: there is no need for iTunes, no need for downloading IPA files, and no more emails with lengthy instructions. All a tester will have to do to check his/her email and click on the link given in it! This library also allows you to leverage data from crash reports, get feedback from the testers, and even use checkpoints. Apart from all these, it also has some useful APIs.
6. ASIHttpRequest
Are you making CFNetwork requests? If yes, you will have to use this library for sure. Being a developer, you might know how complex the API network of the PIPhone can be. This library greatly simplifies network communication by handling every networking task, including POST data, server authentication, uploading files, caching, cookies, synchronous/asynchronous requests, and almost anything you can imagine. If you are doing something related to HTTP, this library will make your life a lot smoother for sure!
7. SSZipArchive
This is one of the most amazing libraries developers can use to unzip files within their IOS application. It is based on the ZipArchive and is a great library to download a set of files from your server and unzip them to a desired location within the file system. Also, it doesn’t require you to call or to the class.
8. InAppSettingsKit
Of course, Apple has provided a Settings. Bundle format for the developers to showcase their app settings within Apple’s own settings app, but what if there is a need to showcase such settings within your app? The IOS developed for that brings unexpected turns and twists, but libraries like InAppSettingsKit make things simpler for you. It empowers you to create a pixel-for-pixel presentation of the Apple Settings app. Also, you can subclass it in order to make it compatible with the look & feel of your app.
9. Flurry
Want to track your application’s usage and statistics? If yes, this service is your best friend. It brings detailed usage statistics about your application, including how many actual users you have, how actively they’re using your app, and from which corner of the world. One of the biggest noticeable features of Flurry is that it allows you to define your own events to track and log errors.
10. ShareKit
Sharing has become a buzzword among tpp users. If you wish to let your app users share from within their mobile app to the popular social networking sites, this library is all that you need. It allows users to share images, texts, and even files on all the popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instapaper, Tumblr, and so on.
Bottom Line
No matter what you want from your app, whether your app is interacting with a web API, visualising data, loading critical data, or utilising social media, just remember that somewhere, there is bound to be a library for everything you want to accomplish! All you have to do is spare some time to “Google” about it!
As an iPhone developer, how many of these libraries have you used in your apps? Have you tried any of them? If not, this is time to tame your iPhone development by utilising these libraries in your future ventures!
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