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Swift is a relatively new programming language released by Apple in 2014 and since then, Apple has followed through on a promise and made significant improvements and tweaks to it.
Irrespective of these massive improvements made to Swift, a major feature that was still missing was primitives for concurrency and parallelism. In this tutorial, we’ll discuss concurrency in Swift 5 and how to implement the Async/Await feature in detail.
Previously, Swift was greatly dependent on libraries such as dispatch, also known as Grand Central Dispatch (GCD), and libdispatch. Nowadays, you can imitate concurrency in Swift using asynchronous functions — a pattern commonly known as Async/Await.
If you’re still confused between Swift and Obj-C, follow through with our detailed Swift vs. Objective-C comparison to discover which is best for you.
Concurrency in Swift 5
Due to the significant improvements made to processors over the past few years, concurrency has become a more prominent subject in computer programming, especially in Swift.
The current concurrency model in Swift works well with both the compiler and the runtime. Moreover, it provides tools such as:
Async: This feature indicates if a method or function is asynchronous. It further lets you suspend the execution of the code until an asynchronous method returns a value (or result).
Await: This feature indicates that your code might halt its execution while it awaits the return of an asynchronous method or function.
The Async/Await function allows for structured concurrency and hence improves the readability of complex asynchronous code in Swift. In simple terms, the Swift Async/ Await function makes your code easier to read and understand.
Check out the complete YouTube tutorial on the new Swift Async/Await feature by Luke Allen below:
Important links:
In this video, iOS developer Luke Allen walks you through how to use the new Swift Async/Await feature to execute asynchronous operations, and other concurrent patterns.
You can play around with the Swift Async/Await functions by downloading Xcode 13 and running your code on beta versions of iOS 15.
[About Luke Allen: Luke Allen, also known as iOS Luke, is a full-time iOS developer for a regional bank and works independently on his weight-training iOS app, CleanLift. He loves to stay involved with the iOS community with his YouTube tutorials, and also via Twitter and Instagram connections. Here's his website: https://www.iosluke.com/]
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You can install CometChat’s iOS UI kit in minutes, and if you need something customized, check out our iOS chat SDK.
Wrapping Up
If you found this tutorial helpful in getting you up and running with the new Swift Async/Await feature, you can start building your iOS chat app by signing in to our developer dashboard for FREE.
Here are some more Swift tutorials if you’re interested in learning more -
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About the Author
Swahani is a marketing specialist at CometChat, joining in May of 2021. She's interested in all things tech, with previous experience writing about the blockchain, data science, and analytics domains. Swahani received a B.Tech degree in Information Technology and Engineering from Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University (Dr. BATU).
Swahani Roy
CometChat
