IOS Xcode help document reading guide

IOS Xcode help document reading guide

 

I have always wanted to write such a thing. For a long time, I have found that many beginners are not familiar with the learning methods. Therefore, the Xcode SDK documents are well placed there, it does not play much role on them. The questions raised by beginners from forums, Weibo, and other places have also revealed that they do not know a lot about their doubts and are actually very clear in the document. Sometimes they cannot find a solution from a document. Or some people realize that reading documents is a good way to learn, but they are not necessary.

There is a very boring problem in the Chinese technical community, that is, the technology is deep, you can't understand the cloud, the technology is shallow, you can understand it is not technical content. I hope this article will be helpful to anyone who does not know how to read the document.

Xcode document structure

　　

 

For example, after opening, the entire document interface consists of a sidebar on the left and a content area on the right. You can select different document libraries from the left-side navigation pane. In your Xcode, there are generally a set of iOS document libraries, a set of OS X Document libraries of different versions, and an Xcode document library.

If you do not have the document library you want to view, you can select the Preferences menu of Xcode and then select Downloads-> Documentation. Here we can see that the document library that has been downloaded and installed is not yet downloaded. You can select as appropriate. For example:

　　

 

Then we can see that the left-side navigation area of the document content area reveals the structure of the document library. For example:

　　

 

The first is Resource Types, which is the Resource type. All the documents in the document library are of these types:

Getting Started-Getting Started. Generally, it is intended for beginners. It is recommended for beginners to see that there are some things to establish concepts. With these things, it is easier to learn later. Guides-guide, which is the coolest and best part of Xcode. If you learn to read the guide, you do not need to buy books in most cases. The instructions in the Xcode document are one by one. Starting from one problem or one aspect of the system, we will introduce in detail how to use the Cocoa library. Generally, programmers are familiar with Reference, which is something that comes out when you look up documents of a class, method, or function. There is no context for those things. Guides helps you sort out the learning context. Reference-references. Documents organized by classes in one framework contain the usage of each method. Release Notes -- Release description. What are the new features of a new iOS version? For more information about the new iOS version, see these documents. Sample Code -- Sample Code. Some sample code officially provided by apple helps you learn certain technologies and Some APIs. It is strongly recommended that you refer to this document when learning. On the one hand, it is difficult to understand the specific implementation. On the other hand, these sample codes are written by Apple engineers. From the changes in the sample code, you can see that the Code style officially recommended by Apple changes. Technical Notes-Technical Notes. Some technical topic articles can be viewed when you are free. There are often some gains. Technical Q & A-common Technical Q &. These are some common questions and answers in the technical community. Video-Video. Currently, it is mainly for WWDC videos, which are actually viewed on the developer's website. This is a shortcut. If you want to study it in depth, you must not miss it. You can not only learn the technology, but also practice English.

To sum up, the Reference, Release Notes, Sample Code, Technical Notes, and Technical Q & A are generally only for future Reference. It mainly depends on Getting Started and Guides.

Then the Topics, that is, the topic, is divided:

Audio & Video-Audio and Video ages & Utilities-language and tools, Objective-C knowledge, and App Store management tools. Mathematical Computation-Mathematical Computation. XcodeData Management-data Management. General: a General question. Graphics & Animation-Graphics and Animation. Networking & Internet-network problems. Performance-Performance. Security-Security. User Experience-User Experience.

Most of them are just as the name suggests. However, it is worth mentioning that many beginners say that I want to understand the shape and animation technologies, but I cannot find them in the Document. You can only say that you are wide-eyed, why can't I see it on the left or right?

The following is the framework:

Cocoa Touch Layer Media LayerCore Services LayerCore OS Layer

We will not discuss this here, but I will discuss it in detail later.

In general, the left navigation area uses three different dimensions to help you pinpoint what you need.

Now let's look at the right side of the content area. Note the above document filter. For example:

　　

 

Assume that you want to view the Performance Guides. You should navigate to Topics> Performance on the left and enter Guides on the document filter on the right. Alternatively, you can click Resource Types-> Guides in the left navigation bar and enter Performance in the document filter.

If you are familiar with navigation and document filters, learning is very convenient and quick.

Documentation for Apple reading

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A total of 149 reply to the building Chief

 

Tinyfool was replied to on July 15, August 21, 2013 | updated before July 15, February

Document Guidance

The document structure of Xcode is described above to show you how to quickly locate the content you are looking. However, many people may not know what to read at the beginning.

Here we will introduce the sequence of reading required documents that should be followed or recommended by the self-taught iOS development.

Reading sequence:

Start Developing iOS Apps Today, Your First iOS App, Your Second iOS App: Storyboards, and Your Third iOS App: iCloud, iOS Technology Overview, iOS Human Interface Guidelines, Learning Objective-C: A Primer and Programming with Objective-C, iOS App Programming Guide, View Programming Guide for iOS, View Controller Programming Guide for iOS, Table View Programming Guide for iOS"

First, you should check Start Developing iOS Apps Today in Getting Started (which is an official English translation of Apple ). This document is very simple, but it is a document that establishes concepts. The concepts you often encounter in future development are included here. Note that this document looks simple, however, the relevant articles on each page are not optional and must be read.

Even many people who have been developing iOS for a long time have many conceptual misunderstandings. Modern program development is becoming simpler and more powerful, and tools are often more and more misunderstood, but in fact, it is very difficult to build a solid foundation. It is often difficult to understand and solve a small problem later.

The purpose and Detection criteria of this document are to understand the basic concepts in iOS development.

After reading Start Developing iOS Apps Today, you should check the Your XXX iOS App series, you don't have to worry about learning Objective-C first. Don't worry about what C language you want to learn. The learning method I recommend is the progressive learning method that has achievements. Before learning system architecture and Objective-C, you can write the simplest App in the world according to the document to complete the first milestone in the learning process. In this process, you don't have to worry about any questions. If you don't understand anything, follow the instructions first.

The purpose and test criterion of reading these three documents is to make these three Demo apps and run them on the simulator.

In this process, your basic understanding of development tools has been established, and you have a sense of accomplishment. You have gone through the charm (that is, you have eliminated the mystery of iOS development ).

Next, I suggest you go to iOS Technology Overview (iOS Technology Overview). iOS is not a Technology, but a bunch of technologies. The previous article describes the classification of the navigation area of the document, this is the reason why I will not elaborate on the Framework Classification. Should you use Core Animation or OpenGL to make an Animation? The Core Text or something should be used for some Text-related operations.

Learning modern Program Development emphasizes both language and framework. The reason we call Tiny4Cocoa this name is that iOS/Mac developers often represent this Cocoa framework, which is the SDK. Most of the functions you need lie in the framework. You know the structure of the Framework, so you know how to find relevant technical materials.

The purpose and test criteria of this document are to know which documents should be viewed in case of specific problems.

Next, we recommend that you read iOS Human Interface Guidelines. Although the Mac/iOS platform also has various programs and apps, it generally seems that, the UI of most excellent apps seems to be very consistent with the whole system. This is totally different from Windows and many other platforms. Why?

This is largely due to the "Human Interface Guidelines" culture. The so-called "Human Interface Guidelines" is the specification of the user Interface. In apple, it also has a special name called HIG, which is a theme like a day. HIG is recommended for all apps, and HIG is followed. Users who make things seem to be very compatible with the whole system. Even if you want to make some innovative designs, you will inevitably break the HIG restrictions, but you should still follow the HIG spirit at this time.

In addition, it is very important to read HIG to understand the entire UI structure and logic mechanism of UE behavior, so that you can have a basis in your design.

The purpose and detection standard of this document is to see any App, you can know whether any UI of it is a system control, custom control, its hierarchy, and so on.

Learning Objective-C: A Primer is A very basic and simple entry, suitable for reading first. Programming with Objective-C is a little more complex and suitable for later reading.

Generally, you are advised to learn the language first. Instead, you are advised to create an App before learning the language. There are several reasons. First of all, modern development tools are often not used to develop console programs, so there will be a framework, and the language alone will not use IDE, and may even be more troublesome. Second, after Modern Languages develop to object-oriented languages, libraries are often more complex and important than languages, or more often, we are learning libraries instead of languages, language is just a carrier of the library.

For example, Delegate and Block are closely related to the UI asynchronous mechanism of Cocoa. Looking at code, these language elements are very difficult to learn and do not know what they mean.

The purpose and test criteria of this document are to understand the basic Objective-C code, so that you can learn and read various sample codes later.

The iOS App Programming Guide describes the complete process of developing an App, including the lifecycle, sleep, and activation of the App. Before officially developing the first online App, you must check it. You can also develop an App that is required to read the document before submission.

The purpose and test criteria of this document are to understand the entire process and many details.

View Programming Guide for iOS and View Controller Programming Guide for iOS are very important. View is the most important concept in the graphic interface. All images and interfaces are based on views. All the complex user interfaces you see are the stacks of different views.

View Controller is a combination of View and a certain logic. In essence, this combination is not necessary, but it is a design that greatly reduces programming complexity. Many people do not know what a View is or what a View Controller is, so it is very painful to write code.

The purpose and test criteria of this document are to deeply understand what View is, what View Controller is, and what View Controller is used.

UITableView is the most important control and is the most commonly used UI interface element. Before the emergence of UICollectionView, a large number of custom controls displayed in the content list were based on UITableView. For example, many shelves and image grids were actually made by UITableView.

Therefore, Table View Programming Guide for iOS is very important and must be carefully read.

The purpose and testing standard of this document is to deeply understand the theory and usage of UITableView/UITableViewController.

There are so many mandatory documents I recommend. If you read them carefully, you can read them at most today. If you have a little patience and a correct method, it is not hard to say that your mind must be very intelligent. Most people can learn iOS development in a week. In fact, they just read these documents, most people will.

As I have emphasized for countless times, it is not difficult to read English documents. I have been reading English documents very hard since that time. I have to check the dictionary and read the English documents carefully, after more than a month, you do not need to query dictionaries when reading English documents.

Our company's Master Cheng @ sycx, also said that he was not good at English, and even now he is still very bad at English, but reading English documents is no problem at all, that is to say, after a few weeks of hard work, we will make a breakthrough.

The same is true for iOS. Of course, I'm not saying that you don't need to read any of these 10 documents anymore. However, if you understand these 10 sets of documents, you will change from a beginner to a hacker who doesn't understand iOS even though you write some programs.

I don't want this article to help you learn what iOS is. The purpose of this article is to help you get started quickly. Once you get started, you will know what to look at when you encounter any other problems. Once you get started, you will find that the content in other documents in Xcode is different, but the structure is clear and easy to learn.

The purpose and test criteria of this article are to understand the document you are reading and the context in which you want to improve your skills.

Reply to Floor 2

 

Tinyfool was replied to on July 15, August 21, 2013 | updated before July 15, February

How to query documents

Quick Help

You do not need to enter any keywords to query the help documentation quickly. You only need to press and hold the Option key in the Xcode code editor and click the keyword you want to query to obtain help information about the keyword. For example:

　　

 

The help information includes some simple descriptions, which iOS operating system is provided, header files, and reference documents. You can click the header file and reference document.

Even if the keyword you click is not the content of the Cocoa library, it is the class or method in your code, you can also obtain the relevant definition information. For example:

　　

 

The related hot key is the Command key and mouse click, you can jump to any class name or method name defined header file.

Another way to quickly query Help is to directly open the Quick Help column. For example, first find the "right bar switch" and then find the "Quick Help" switch.

　　

 

The function of the Quick Help column is that as long as it is open and the cursor is entered on a keyword, the Quick Help column displays brief Help information related to the keyword, it is basically the same as the Option key plus click information, but it may be slightly richer.

When writing code, in most cases, it is enough to query and quickly help and look at the header file.

Search for help

The magnifier button at the top left of the Document Reading interface is the search interface. Is the search result obtained by searching for uiimage.

　　

 

First, it is worth noting that the results are classified into four categories: Reference, System Guides, Tools Guides, and Sample Code. Categories help us quickly find the information we need. The category has been introduced earlier. It is basically the same as that. Just refer to it.

In addition, the options in the search box are Hits Must (which results will be hit), which includes three items:

Contain search term this is the most common result that contains the search term start with search term starting from the search term match the search term must fully match the search term

The language options include Javascript, C ++, Java, Objective-C, and C.

Then, Find in contains all the document libraries installed in Xcode.

Read documents

Finally, let's briefly introduce how to read the document. The Document Reading interface is as follows:

　　

 

It is worth noting that the titles are as follows:

Inherits from inheritance relationship, inherit from Conforms to follow what Protocol Framework is what Framework Availability start from what iOS version support Declared in header file Related sample code example code Companion guide Related guide (UIImage does not, many other classes)

The second most important thing is the narrow navigation bar on the title. It is a multi-layered tree navigation bar. when reading the document, you can click on different locations in the column to browse.

In fact, this column contains the tree structure of the entire document library. Unfortunately, you can only browse it on this interface. If you are interested, you can browse it slowly. The amount of information in it is actually very large.