An architectural pattern for apps built on the SwiftUI lifecycle
What is Puddles?
Warning Puddles is still in early development. Things will break, so please use this carefully and at your own risk. Feedback is always appreciated.
Puddles revolves around a Coordinator protocol that is used at the root of each component or screen in your app.
A Coordinator is itself a SwiftUI view, meaning it can be placed anywhere that any other view could be placed. It also means that SwiftUI takes full responsibility for handling the Coordinator’s lifetime and state objects, unless specified otherwise. Inside a Coordinator, you define your component’s entry view, its navigational paths (navigation links, sheets, alerts, …) as well as the entry view’s state. Through view interfaces, the entry view can read that state and communicate user input to the Coordinator, which can then decide on the desired behavior and state changes. This effectively turns the view into a context-unaware piece of UI that can be placed anywhere in your project (or even a different project).
Getting Started
Requirements
Puddles supports the following platforms:
- iOS 15+
- macOS 12+
You will also need Swift 5.7 to compile the package.
Installation
The package is installed through the Swift Package Manager. Simply add the following line to your Package.swift dependencies:
.package(url: "https://github.com/SwiftedMind/Puddles", from: "0.1.0")
Alternatively, if you want to add the package to an Xcode project, go to File > Add Packages... and enter the URL “https://github.com/SwiftedMind/Puddles” into the search field at the top. Puddles should appear in the list. Select it and click “Add Package” in the bottom right.
First Steps
It is easy to build an app with Puddles. The entire basic setup looks like this:
import SwiftUI
import Puddles
struct Root: Coordinator {
var entryView: some View {
Text("Hello, World")
}
func navigation() -> some NavigationPattern {
}
}
@main
struct YourApp: App {
var body: some Scene {
WindowGroup {
Root()
}
}
}
Documentation
The documentation for Puddles can be found here: https://swiftedmind.github.io/Puddles/documentation/puddles/
Tutorials can be found here: https://swiftedmind.github.io/Puddles/tutorials/puddlestutorials
The Puddles Architecture
Coordinators
Coming soon…
Unidirectional Data Flow
Coming soon…
Data Management
Coming soon…
Why use Puddles?
Finding a solid foundation to build well-structured apps based on the SwiftUI lifecycle has been a challenging problem since the framework’s release. While SwiftUI excels at fast paced composition of view hierarchies, it is surprisingly easy to create lots of hard couplings between logic and UI, making it virtually impossible to keep a project modular and flexible.
Navigation and data management in particular have been troublesome. Both should not be part of UI code since a view is supposed to be agnostic of its context. However, moving the logic too far away means losing out on all the great features that SwiftUI has to offer, like the Environment or automatic lifetime management of data. Puddles strives to strike a balance.
Puddles is trying to be as flexible and dynamic as possible. Every app is unique and requires specific ways of doing things, and being locked into a very strict architecture can quickly become frustrating.
Puddles attempts to offer a helpful guidance and structure for your app, but does not force you into anything. It is built to be fully compatible with any other SwiftUI project, allowing you to incrementally adopt Puddles in existing projects, as well as link to any traditional SwiftUI view from within the scope of a Puddle Coordinator.
License
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2023 Dennis Müller and all collaborators
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.