I thought I’d document a fantastic range of resources and software that should be part of an iOS Developer, based on my experiences. The sources I will provide are a historical collection of GitHub sources, as well as software and design tools and plugins that would make your life as a programmer so much easier, richer and ultimately more creative.
Open-source plugins & services
Why bother tinkering with web services and parsing and storing the data locally. This work-horse takes all the work out and effort out of it so elegantly. It’s the first repo I create as a sub-module in my new iOS project.
I am a strong advocate of good documentation within your code, and this great repository makes generating Apple-style HTML documents a synch.
When you realise you have to abstract and reuse a lot of your code, especially across other projects, it’s much better to create a static framework rather than share your workspace. This will give your XCode a new template that will allow you to easily create such a framework (so you can just send one file rather than include a bunch of folders when you share).
Speaking of abstracting and re-using, I am creating a (Work in Progress) public area of common helper categories that I would use in other projects. Most of the content is taken from other public GitHub projects. Think of this as a toolkit for things such as NSArray helpers, which will be updated over time. Credit for the contributing authors are in the header file comments.
The biggest list of utilities and helpers I know. Quite handy.
OK this isn’t an Objective-C repo but for anyone who wants to create a web service easily server-side, even with minimal PHP knowledge, this is the baby.
When it comes to testing and distributing your app to a select few prior to going on the AppStore, this free-service is priceless. It allows you to choose who to send to, you distribute the app, track how they use it, and provide updates that automatically notify them to upgrade.
This company takes the hassle out of creating unique customised (or even vanilla) subscription services and push notifications. They are fantastic and make it a heck of a lot easier.
A fantastic open source framework for reporting crashes in the app back to the developer, through a modal popup to ask the user for permission. With server-side code to aggregate crashes, this is fantastic!
You can take a look at all the other github projects I follow, by clicking here.
Essential software (besides XCode)
Essential for designing with rulers and ways to mock, measure, inspect and test your app.
Fantastic tool to automagically create Cocoa classes from JSON. Just point it to the web service and it will create the CoreData stuff for you.
The number one time saver to work with XCode, with over 40 code generation actions.
You already get a sort of Git connection via XCode but this is the easiest Git GUI app to use by far. I always have this open when i am working on a project.
Well this is it, I will update this list with more essential tools but feel free to add your own .
