Using Swift with Salesforce Mobile SDK

Creating Swift Apps

To create Mobile SDK Swift projects, you can assemble the pieces manually, or you can use the forceios create command. With forceios, specify native_swift as the application type, or simply press Return. For example:

forceios create
Enter your application type (native, native_swift, leave empty for native_swift): <PRESS RETURN>
Enter your application name: TestSwift
Enter your package name: com.bestapps.swift
Enter your organization name (Acme, Inc.): BestApps, Inc.
Enter output directory for your app (leave empty for the current directory): TestSwift

For manual app creation steps, see Creating an iOS Swift Project Manually.

Swift API Naming

In Mobile SDK, Swift methods and classes closely follow the related Objective-C API signatures. However, to facilitate calling Objective-C APIs, Mobile SDK defines Swift-friendly names for most methods and parameters. When Mobile SDK defines a custom Swift name, it appears in the Objective-C header file with the tag NS_SWIFT_NAME immediately following the Objective-C method declaration. Here’s an example method declaration:

- (nullable SFSyncState*) reSyncByName:(NSString*)syncName
                           updateBlock:(SFSyncSyncManagerUpdateBlock)updateBlock
                           NS_SWIFT_NAME(reSync(named:onUpdate:));

With class and protocol names, the declaration comes before the class declaration:

NS_SWIFT_NAME(RestClient)
@interface SFRestAPI : NSObject

If an Objective-C API is not available in Swift, you’ll see the tag NS_SWIFT_UNAVAILABLE("") next to the API declaration.

Most Swift class names are simply the Objective-C name without the “SF” prefix, but there are some refinements as well. For example, SFRestAPI equates to RestClient in Swift. Here are some noteworthy examples.