Top Useful iOS Libraries For Your Next Project

Can you imagine a world today without mobile apps? That is how critical they are in people’s lives. The two most popular mobile app platforms today include the iOS platform. Furthermore, for any mobile development project, there are so many iOS libraries that are extremely useful.

Libraries for iOS are files that define code pieces and data, which are not part of the Xcode target. The process of merging external libraries with the source code files of an app is known as linking. Libraries and frameworks are everywhere—all of these are from the standard library of Apple and chances are high that you’re using a lot of them in your present project.

iOS developers deal with lots of frameworks and iOS development tools daily and understand intuitively what they are, still, there is a lack of understanding of how they work under the hood and their differences. Before partnering with an iOS development company, it’s important to understand the top useful libraries for your next project.

The Best iOS Libraries To Use For App Development Today

1.AFNetworking

Used for iOS, macOS, and tvOS, AFNetworking is an Objective-C networking library. Known as a robust library it has been around for years now. It has all, from basic networking to advanced features, which include SSL Pinning and Network Reachability. It’s one of the most popular libraries of all time with nearly 50 million downloads. Today, it’s the third biggest Objective-C library on GitHub and is built on the NSURL Connection, NSOperation basis, and other class libraries, which makes the realisation of a lot of network communication functions pretty straightforward. Thus, it’s widely used in many iOS development services.

2. Alamofire

A successor of AFNetworking that’s written in Swift and one of the popular libraries used by an app development company. This library is highly recommended for beginner developers who are starting out brand-new projects in Swift to build the code networking library that’s consistent with one’s own source code. It has an HTTP network requests interface, being a particular IOS HTTP and Mac OS X networking tool.

URLSession and URLSessionTask happen to be at the core of the system. The library wraps the APIs in a seamless interface, which provides various features for modern app development with HTTP networking. Alamofire is easily dependable in terms of downloading, getting JSON, updating, and so on.

3. SDWebImage

An asynchronous image downloaded with caching, the library has handy UIKit categories to do things, such as setting a UIImageView image to a URL. Although networking has become much easier in Cocoa through the years, the basic setting of an image view to an image with a URL has not improved much. The library helps ease many pains, thus, it’s very popular in iOS development services and developers.

4. Reactive Cocoa

The library is encouraged by reactive functional programming, it’s also an Objective-C framework that’s meant to offer code that’s flow-based and more precise. Furthermore, the library is also referred to as FRP or Functional Reactive Programming since it combines various programming styles.

For certain changes done in one part of an app to be reflected automatically to the whole application, FRP is a great help. Reactive Cocoa comes with several in-built functionalities, which enable changing the signal. While using this iOS library is not a simple task, it is, however, undoubtedly rewarding.

5. SwiftyJSON

The library will improve your life while dealing with JSON in Swift. Furthermore, it helps make parsing JSON with Swift simple. It’s the second most popular Swift library today. As an open source third-party library, it has over 21K starts on GitHub and maintained since its initial release in 2014.

The library also supports the latest Xcode, Swift, and iOS versions. It has met all the needs of an iOS development company so far.

6. MBProgressHUD

Another useful iOS library that fills a huge hole in UIKit. Being a popular developer library, it provides a class that displays a HUD or heads-up display with a text, spinner, or images to showcase progress, loading, success/failure, or other alerts to a user. The transparent HUD has an indicator and/or labels while work is performed on a background thread.

The HUD is intended to be a replacement for the private, undocumented UIKit with some more features.

7. Chameleon

For iOS app development, the library is a powerful, lightweight, and colour framework. The sole intent of the library is to help make apps work easily, while maintaining the attractive and contemporary interfaces. If you are considering a design and don’t want to be confused about RGB values, you can definitely save time with Chameleon. Chameleon is an important addition to your arsenal if you want to build a top-notch app fast. Furthermore, as a colour management framework, adding a splash of colour to an app is extremely easy.

8. SVProgressHUD

Another HUD library for both iOS and tvOS. Compared to the MBProgressHUD, the API is a little bit simpler because it creates a singleton. You only have to call the show and hide when you use it. Furthermore, you can customise the HUD with an image, text, or a progress indicator.

Again, there definitely is a need for this when developing iOS applications, and is a useful alternative to MBProgressHUD. Indeed, it’s a prettified and simplified alternative to the popular MBProgressHUD.

9. CocoaLumberjack

The iOS library is simple but powerful. It is a logging framework for all logging requirements. If you want more done than just NSLog or print, then CocoaLumberjack could help. It lets you perform logging, write several loggers, log to a local file, and make various log levels.

Moreover, it’s an extremely helpful library when it comes to the reproduction of an elusive bug, or having a better grasp on several user behaviours.

10. Realm

A cross-platform that’s also an enticing alternative to Core Data in terms of persistence. Working with Realm is faster and easier. Moreover, you could also explore database files with a data browser. Another reason why you will love Realm is that currently, it’s a very popular library for iOS development services.

Recently, it launched a platform to sync data between applications in real-time. Realm is a great alternative to Core Data if you want to do data persistence.

11. RxSwift Library

RxSwift is a Functional Reactive Programming version. It’s one of the most used iOS libraries today. It’s expressed by using an observable element interface and enables composing asynchronous operations and data streams effortlessly. In its essence, it streamlines the development of asynchronous programs by letting code react to new processes and data in an isolated and sequential manner.

RxSwift helps write better applications. This is particularly true when writing event-based and asynchronous code. It furthermore helps in maintaining the codebase with less effort.

The Benefits Of Open-Source iOS Libraries

The majority of companies and every app development company today opted for open-source mainly due to compatibility, quality, teamwork, reliability, and efficiency. The following are some of the benefits of using open-source iOS libraries.

1. Quality and Reliability

Technical simplicity is the main reason why iOS development services prefer open-source libraries. The open-source code, according to research, helps boost the functionality with eye-catching designs and pushes excellence in terms of coding.

Open-source apps or libraries are built by several skilled app and web developers where every user can access the source code and debugging tools. One could fix bugs, explore, provide possible changes, and expand the functional set as well.

2. Lower Software Costs

Since open-source solutions require no licensing fee, it has a much lower ownership cost than conventional library systems. You only have to spend for support, documentation, or media.

3. Flexibility and Security

One more reason to use open-source software is the flexibility it brings. The codes available are associated with any developer and provide an extensive array of capabilities. Furthermore, the open-source app licence offers freedom for users to choose functions based on their requirements.

This could be done by simply altering the source code. Aside from this, the peer view process assures security and liability.

4. Adaptability and Innovation

Innovation is an extremely popular term when it comes to open-source IOS libraries. You don’t have to wait for subsequent updates or releases. Rather, you could develop and launch the features required.

Anyone who is interested is free to include new functions and features in their app projects. Moreover, open-source libraries let you adapt code as per your specific requirements in a seamless manner. The ability of customization and adjustment helps in making the open-source library preferred by everybody.

5. Cooperation and Community

Since it’s the same as an open podium in which nobody would judge you, open-source libraries are renowned to encourage communication, collaboration, and cooperation between professionals, which helps accomplish valuable software projects. The most used iOS open-source libraries are supported by online forums and support groups where same-minded experts share their expertise.

Furthermore, companies benefit from getting more attention to their apps. Likewise, they keep on working and trying to make their products much better and more reliable. The most used iOS libraries are developer-friendly since these are virtually compatible with any situation and provide a solution that’s affordable. It is, ultimately, all about lacing together these libraries for the development of an end product.

Conclusion

An iOS app development company has competent and experienced developers who could take your project to the next level. Furthermore, these professionals are equipped with the latest updates and knowledge when it comes to iOS app development as well as making full use of several iOS libraries to deliver flawless goods.

About the Author:

Rachana Singh working as a software developer in a CMMI level 3 company. She also likes to share her bylines in reputed blogs.