03:12
Welcome to Building Reactive Applications With Combine. As the name suggests, this series zooms in on Apple's Combine framework. We cover the the ins and outs of the framework and you learn everything you need to know to make your projects reactive with the Combine framework.
09:53
Combine is sometimes referred to as a functional reactive programming framework, but that isn’t correct. It is more accurate to describe Combine as a reactive programming framework that uses functional programming techniques.
06:49
Swift isn't a functional programming language, but it does have a number of functional features. The Combine framework relies on these functional features so it is important that you understand the basics of functional programming. That is the focus of this and the next episode.
06:51
In the previous episode, you learned about function types and what it means for Swift to have first-class functions. With these concepts in mind, we continue exploring the functional features of the Swift programming language. In this episode, we explore pure functions and higher-order functions. We start with pure functions.
04:17
Earlier in this series, we defined reactive programming as working with asynchronous streams of data. Now that you know what asynchronous streams of data are, it is clear why asynchronous programming is such a powerful concept.
07:51
It is time to show you what Combine feels like and what it can do for you. What do you gain by using the Combine framework in your projects? Let's start with some good news. The Combine framework has a relatively small vocabulary. You don't need to spend days or weeks familiarizing yourself with a plethora of types, protocols, and terminology.
04:24
In the previous episode, you learned about publishers and subscribers. Combine creates a subscription when a subscriber is attached to a publisher. In the setupNotificationHandling() method of the RootViewModel class, the subscription is returned to the view model as an AnyCancellable instance. The view model holds on to the AnyCancellable instance to prevent the subscription from terminating early. We covered this in the previous episode.
05:48
We haven't simplified or improved the implementation of the setupNotificationHandling() method of the RootViewModel class by adding Combine to the mix. In fact, Combine introduced additional complexity and we now need to manage the subscriptions we create. It is true that Combine comes with a bit of overhead. The traditional Cocoa API seems to be the better choice. Right?
08:17
Streams of values are at the heart of reactive programming. These values are delivered by publishers. In this episode, we zoom in on the relationship between publishers and subscribers.
06:45
You learned in the previous episode that a publisher sends zero or more values. A publisher emits an error if something goes wrong and, if the publisher is finite, it can send a completion event. In this episode, we continue exploring the relationship between publishers and subscribers. We zoom in on the life cycle of a subscription.
08:01
The Cocoa frameworks use a range of asynchronous interfaces, including the target-action pattern, key-value observing, notifications, and callbacks. We can leverage the Combine framework to create a single, unified interface for asynchronous programming. This opens up a number of compelling advantages.
07:33
The Published property wrapper lowers the barrier to start integrating the Combine framework into a project. There are a few details you need to take into account, though. Remember from the previous episode that we need to address two issues. Let's look at the first issue.
06:27
We made good progress in the previous episodes, but we need to make some changes to the RootViewController and RootViewModel classes. We address three issues in this episode. First, the RootViewController class shouldn't be aware of CLLocation objects. Second, the RootViewModel class should expose a publisher that emits weather data. Third, we need to restore the pull-to-refresh feature. Let's get started.
08:36
The root view controller displays the weather data the publisher emits. Every time the publisher emits weather data, the child view controllers of the root view controller receive the weather data and display it to the user. This works fine, but we can make it more reactive.
07:42
In the previous episode, we put the foundation in place to reactify the DayViewController class. In this episode, you learn how to use publishers to drive the user interface of an application.
08:50
There are a few user interface issues we need to address in this episode. The day view controller no longer shows its activity indicator view while it is waiting for weather data and the user interface elements that show the weather data should only be shown when there is weather data to display. Let's find out how we can resolve these issues.
