Combine: Asynchronous Programming with Swift

by Shai Mishali, Ray Wenderlich, Scott Gardner

Writing asynchronous code can be challenging, with a variety of possible interfaces to represent, perform, and consume asynchronous work — delegates, notification center, KVO, closures, etc. Juggling all of these different mechanisms can be somewhat overwhelming. Does it have to be this hard? Not anymore! In this book, you'll learn about Combine — Apple’s framework to work with asynchronous events in a unified and reactive way that ensures your app is always up to date based on the latest state of its data. This book is for intermediate iOS developers who already know the basics of iOS and Swift development but are interested in learning declarative/reactive programming and take their app and state management to the next level. You'll also find this book interesting if you're interested in SwiftUI — as many of the reactive capabilities keeping your SwiftUI views up-to-date are built on top of Combine. By the end of this book, you'll be a pro in building full-fledged applications using Combine's various abilities.

Genres: Programming, Engineering

451 pages, Paperback

Published December 5, 2019

Reviews

[Soheil Novinfard · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a good book to start learning Combine, just for entry-level programmers.

However the writers don't seem have a solid knowledge of Combine themselves. Additionally, the example projects didn't follow design patterns and SOLID principles. The Testing chapter was so weak and is not something I can advice anyone to use in their production code-base.

Moreover, the paradigm of teaching was completely dictated by pre-assumptions and fictional examples which doesn't let the reader to think and hence learn the subjects. I can give this book 2 star just because of the efforts they did.

[Fernando Fernandes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid book that I'll definitely keep around as reference.

It covers the most important aspects of Apple's functional reactive programming library or (as Apple puts it) "declarative Swift API for processing values over time".

Well-structured book with relevant and useful examples. A must for anyone using or learning Combine.

Good riddance, RxSwift! 👋🏻

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Authors are high profile Reactive programming contributors in the RxSwift World, Having read their RxSwift Book I was expecting all the good things to be in this book as well ie. Advanced stuffs like writing your custom Publishers,Subscribers etc.. as well as extending cabalities of existing APIs. I enjoyed reading the whole book and feel pretty comfortable to use the acquired knowledge for future apps.

[Aivars Meijers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for base understanding about Combine, but I would like to see more SiftUI + Combine examples
The most important - the last chapter project didn't work at all - data is not retrieved from the server.

[Jagan Moorthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good book to understand the basics. The APIs used in the tutorials in the later sections are outdated though. Even the "Finished" projects from Ray Wenderlich doesn't work fine.

[Marko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! But most important last chapter project doesn’t work for me - data is not retrieved from the server.