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SwiftUI iOS Tutorial

On this page

  • Overview
  • Learning Objectives
  • Prerequisites
  • Start with the Template
  • Explore the Template App
  • Open the App
  • Explore the App Structure
  • Run the App
  • Check the Backend
  • Modify the Application
  • Add a New Property
  • Add a Property to the Model
  • Set the Priority when Creating a New Item
  • Run and Test
  • Change the Subscription
  • Update the subscription
  • Run and Test
  • Conclusion
  • What's Next?

Realm provides a Swift SDK that allows you to create a native iOS mobile application with Swift or Objective-C. This tutorial is based on the SwiftUI Flexible Sync Template App, named swiftui.todo.flex, which illustrates the creation of a to-do list application. This application enables users to:

  • Register their email as a new user account.

  • Sign in to their account with their email and password (and sign out later).

  • View, create, modify, and delete their own tasks.

  • View all tasks, even where the user is not the owner.

The template app also provides a toggle that simulates the device being in "Offline Mode." This toggle lets you quickly test Device Sync functionality on the simulator, emulating the user having no internet connection. However, you would likely remove this toggle in a production application.

This tutorial builds on the Template App. You will add a new priority field to the existing Item model and update the Flexible Sync subscription to only show items within a range of priorities.

Depending on your experience with SwiftUI, this tutorial should take around 30 minutes.

This tutorial illustrates how you might adapt the template app for your own needs. You would not necessarily make this change given the current structure of the template app.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

  • Update a Realm object model with a non-breaking change.

  • Update a Device Sync subscription.

  • Add a queryable field to the Device Sync configuration on the server to change which data is synchronized.

Tip

If you prefer to get started with your own application rather than follow a guided tutorial, check out the Swift Quick Start. It includes copyable code examples and the essential information that you need to set up an Atlas App Services backend.

For a SwiftUI-specific get started experience, refer to the Realm with SwiftUI QuickStart.

  • This tutorial starts with a Template App. You need an Atlas Account, an API key, and appservices to create a Template App.

    • You can learn more about creating an Atlas account in the Atlas Getting Started documentation. For this tutorial, you need an Atlas account with a free-tier cluster.

    • You also need an Atlas API key for the MongoDB Cloud account you wish to log in with. You must be a Project Owner to create a Template App using appservices.

    • To learn more about installing appservices, see Install App Services CLI. After installing, run the login command using the API key for your Atlas project.

This tutorial is based on the SwiftUI Flexible Sync Template App named swiftui.todo.flex. We start with the default app and build new features on it.

To learn more about the Template Apps, see Template Apps.

If you don't already have an Atlas account, sign-up to deploy a Template App.

1

Open the frontend client's App.xcodeproj in Xcode.

If you downloaded the client as a .zip file or cloned the client GitHub repository, you must manually insert the App Services App ID in the appropriate place in your client. Follow the Configuration instructions in the client README.md to learn where to insert your App ID.

2

Take a few minutes to explore how the project is organized while Swift Package Manager downloads the latest version of the Realm Swift SDK. Within the App directory, you can see a few files worth noting:

File
Purpose
AppConfig.swift
This file contains the logic to read the appId and baseUrl from the Realm.plist. This is pre-populated with the appId for your Template App.
App.swift

This file uses the values from AppConfig.swift to initialize the RealmSwift.App. The App is how your app communicates with the App Services backend. This provides access to login and authentication. This file also contains the error handler that listens for Device Sync errors.

To learn more about how you can customize your app configuration, see: Connect to an Atlas App Services Backend.

This file is also the entrypoint to the SwiftUI app. We pass the App to the ContentView that observes the app state for user authentication state.

In this tutorial, you'll be working in the following files:

File
Purpose
Item.Swift
This file, located at the root of the project, defines the Realm object we store in the database.
CreateItemView.swift
This file, located in the Views directory, provides the functionality to add a new item to the list.
ContentView.Swift
This file, located in the Views directory, defines the Flexible Sync subscription.
3

Without making any changes to the code, you should be able to run the app in the iOS Simulator or on a physical device.

Run the app, register a new user account, and then add a new Item to your todo list.

4

Log in to Atlas App Services. In the Data Services tab, click on Browse Collections. In the list of databases, find and expand the todo database, and then the Item collection. You should see the document you created in this collection.

1

Now that you have confirmed everything is working as expected, we can add changes. In this tutorial, we have decided that we want to add a "priority" property to each Item so that we can filter Items by their priorities. The priority property uses a PriorityLevel enum to constrain the possible values.

To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Open the App.xcodeproj in Xcode.

  2. Open the Item.swift class file.

  3. Add the following property to the Item class:

    @Persisted var priority: PriorityLevel
  4. Also add a PriorityLevel PersistableEnum below the Item class:

    class Item: Object, ObjectKeyIdentifiable {
    @Persisted(primaryKey: true) var _id: ObjectId
    @Persisted var isComplete = false
    @Persisted var summary: String
    @Persisted var owner_id: String
    @Persisted var priority: PriorityLevel
    }
    enum PriorityLevel: Int, PersistableEnum, CaseIterable {
    case severe = 0
    case high = 1
    case medium = 2
    case low = 3
    var description: String {
    switch self {
    case .severe: return "Severe"
    case .high: return "High"
    case .medium: return "Medium"
    case .low: return "Low"
    }
    }
    }

    PersistableEnum is the protocol that marks enum types as persistable directly in Realm. We set the enum's type as Int here instead of String so we can query based on a numeric priority level later. We use a description computed property to display a string representation of the priority in the UI.

2
  1. In the Views directory, go to CreateItemView.swift. Add a new @State property under the existing itemSummary property. For now, set the default value to medium priority:

    @State var itemSummary = ""
    @State var priority = PriorityLevel.medium
  2. Now, in the Form body, add a Picker that enables the user to choose which priority level to set on the new Item. Locate the Section that contains the buttons, and insert the following code above it:

    Section(header: Text("Priority")) {
    Picker(selection: $priority, label: Text("Set priority")) {
    ForEach(PriorityLevel.allCases, id: \.self) { priority in
    Text(priority.description)
    }
    }
    }
  3. Now, move down to the Button(action: that sets the values of the newItem when the user presses the Save button. Add a line below newItem.summary to also set the priority property:

    newItem.summary = itemSummary
    newItem.priority = priority
3

At this point, you can run the application again. Log in using the account you created earlier in this tutorial. You will see the one Item you previously created. Add a new Item, and you will see that you can now set the priority. Choose High for the priority and save the Item.

Now switch back to the Atlas data page in your browser, and refresh the Item collection. You should now see the new Item with the priority field added and set to 1. The existing Item does not have a priority field.

Two items in a collection
click to enlarge

Note

Why Didn't This Break Sync?

Adding a property to a Realm object is not a breaking change and therefore does not require a client reset. The template app has Development Mode enabled, so changes to the client Realm object are reflected in the server-side schema. For more information, see Development Mode and Update Your Data Model.

1

In the ContentView.swift file, we create the Flexible Sync subscription that defines which documents we sync with the user's device & account. Look for the let config = user.flexibleSyncConfiguration(initialSubscriptions: variable where we set the initial subscriptions. Within the subscriptions.append() method, you can see that we are currently subscribing to all documents where the owner_id property matches the authenticated user's id. We want to maintain that, but only sync Items that are marked as High or Severe priority.

This is why we set the PriorityLevel enum to type Int, where the highest priority (severe) has a value of 0, and the lowest priority (low) has a value of 3. We can make direct comparisons between an Int and the priority property. To do so, update the query statement to include documents where the priority is equal to or less than PriorityLevel.High (or 1), as shown here.

We'll also add the reRunOnOpen bool, and set it to true, to force the subscription query to recalculate which documents to sync every time we open the app.

let config = user.flexibleSyncConfiguration(initialSubscriptions: { subs in
if let foundSubscription = subs.first(named: Constants.myItems) {
foundSubscription.updateQuery(toType: Item.self, where: {
$0.owner_id == user.id && $0.priority <= PriorityLevel.high
})
} else {
// No subscription - create it
subs.append(QuerySubscription<Item>(name: Constants.myItems) {
$0.owner_id == user.id && $0.priority <= PriorityLevel.high
})
}
}, rerunOnOpen: true)
2

Run the application again. Log in using the account you created earlier in this tutorial. Because we added reRunOnOpen, the app should re-sync only the documents that match the Flexible Sync query. After an initial moment when Realm resyncs the document collection, you will only see the new Item of High priority that you created.

The Item document you initially created is not synced, because it does not have a priority field. If you want this Item to be synced, you can edit the document in the Atlas UI and add a value for the priority field.

If you want to further test the functionality, you can create Items of various priorities. You will see that a new Item with a lower priority briefly appears in the list of Items and then disappears. The Sync error handler helpfully provides a message describing this behavior:

ERROR
"Client attempted a write that is outside
of permissions or query filters; it has been reverted"

You can also see this message in the console log.

In this scenario, Realm creates the Item locally, syncs it with the backend, and then reverts the write because it doesn't meet the subscription rules.

Adding a property to an existing Realm object is a non-breaking change, and Development Mode ensures that the schema change is reflected server-side.

Note

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