Writing a Swift App With Firebase
Swift is the latest and greatest from Apple for writing iOS and OSX applications. With any luck it will eventually replace Objective-C as the goto language. One doesn’t need to wait though, as one of the banner features of Swift is the ability to include Objective-C code right into your Swift projects. As it turns out it is quite easy to use frameworks that were originally written specifically for ObjC based apps.
Here I’ll walk you through, step-by-step, on how to use a Firebase backend with your app.
Step 1 #
Open Xcode 6-beta and start a new project. Select Swift as your language of choice.
Step 2 #
Create a new Objective-C file in your project. When prompted if you would like to include a bridging header, say “yes”. Then, delete the .m file that you created keeping only the bridging-header.h file that was created for you. Add the following line to that file:
#import <Firebase/Firebase.h>
Step 3 #
Download the Firebase SDK from https://www.firebase.com/docs/ios-quickstart.html
Also add the following dependencies to your project:
- libicucore.dylib
- libc++.dylib
- CFNetwork.framework
- Security.framework
- SystemConfiguration.framework
Step 4 #
Finally, go to your build path and find the option called Other Linker Flags and add the flag:
-ObjC
That’s it! Now you have full access to the Firebase SDK within your Swift project!