Note: Discussion in this post assumes we are considering single window based scenario.

Sometimes I need to access the main window of my app to add some temporary views to it - making it appear forefront no matter at what depth of user’s navigation-flow I am in.

From old days of single window based app we have been using very convenient property handed to us: keyWindow

guard let window = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow else {return}

It has been long time. Now this has been deprecated from iOS 13 onwards.

We have our windows accessible from windows array:

let window = UIApplication.shared.windows[0]

A free assumption would be that first window in array would be the main window of the app - being the root. We want the root window so that any view being added be directly on top for our given purpose here. It worked good until unexpected happened. First object did not give UIWindow but UITextEffectsWindow. I could not add my view on the top anymore - adding to UITextEffectsWindow didn’t work for curiosity.

I have been using SKShapeNode extensively to draw quick graphics by filling them with CGPaths for quick visual debugging and making prototypes. For example I can create procedural mountains quickly with SKShapeNode. In early times of spritekit SKShapeNode didn’t have way to render images on it. We have fillTexture available now that allows texture to fill the shape.

let shapeNode = SKShapeNode()
shapeNode.fillTexture = SKTexture(imageNamed: “testImage")

But, Our SKShapeNode is displaying nothing.

Why is that?

I stumbled upon a crash in my app. In my app I have a WKWebView that lets user access web. I tried saving image from a website by long pressing - general way we do in our iOS safari - and app crashed. This user experience behaviour of long pressing and saving image is very common.

The crash error is:

Using native image picker system is easy and solves everyday basic needs of most apps.

Here is an example code that lets user pick images from photo library:

pickerController = UIImagePickerController()
pickerController?.delegate = self
pickerController?.mediaTypes = ["public.image"]
pickerController?.sourceType = .photoLibrary

self.present(pickerController!, animated: true, completion: nil)

We need to implement delegate methods that provides us media info from which we can extract image in our case if available. Here is a code

func imagePickerController(_ picker: UIImagePickerController, didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo info: [UIImagePickerController.InfoKey : Any]) {
    if let image = info[.originalImage] as? UIImage{
    }
}

Our picked image resides inside the key .originalImage which is optional so if something went wrong then it will be nil.

Now, UIImagePickerController also supports basic crop. To activate crop we set the allowsEditing property to true. By default it is false.

I went outdoors to forest in hills of Nepal to forage mushrooms and identify them. Monsoon has announced its presence and marks the season for some edible mushrooms from Amanita family to be found in wild. Amanita is tricky family and recommended to avoid by non-experienced mushroom foragers. We were looking for mainly edible Caesar’s Mushrooms or Amanita Caesarea. There are poisonous imposters so be careful and be 100% sure.

I am an inexperienced mushroom forager beginner with no experience in mushroom identification. This marked my first field experience in identifying wild mushrooms. I brought along my mother who has some experience in identifying edible mushrooms - mainly caesar’s mushroom. Right now, Forest is lush green and so fresh like springtime of youth from monsoon rains and making appearances of Amanita mushrooms that is common native to this nearby region during from months of June to August.

I want to configure the web servers on my Elastic Beanstalk environment’s instances to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS.

I want to state what my beanstalk environment is:

• Apache Web Server.
• PHP 7.3
• HTTPS listener well configured with certificate

I will use a flexible way to configure my environment using .ebextensions

AWS provides a feature to exchange or swap the CNAME between environments. Documentation says -

If I want to upgrade my elastic beanstalk platform from say - for example php 5.6 to php 7.1 - then unfortunately I cannot do it. It allows me to upgrade within 5.6 platform but not switch between major platforms. Only recommended way is to create new environment with major upgraded platform and then swap the environment urls. This way original environment url will still be pointed to my domain running new platform.

Adding HTTPS to elastic beanstalk environment isn’t complicated to configure; until I fell into small mistake. Some of configuration dashboard’s flow been changed a bit from last time I setup the SSL certificate to a beanstalk environment.

Assumptions:

• SSL certificate is ready from AWS Certificate manager.
• Using lassic Load Balancer (Optional)
• Configuration on application side is all fine.

Now assumption is we already have a SSL certificate created from AWS Certificate manager. We will head inside configuration of beanstalk environment. Under Load Balancer Configuration, we will add new lister that listens to HTTPS protocol at port 443. Under the settings, HTTP listener will already be added by default. Another assumption is that default security group added during creation of environment has all correct inbound rules to allow proper incoming access. Generally this is all taken care by beanstalk environment behind the scenes so we will not delve into too deep but focus on abstraction layer where making a mistake is easily susceptible to a new user.

In Swift 5 we do no longer have access to substring() methods for they are deprecated. We will discuss all alternatives and understand them in details.

• How to access Characters in String?
• Why Int based Subscript is not available in Swift?
• What is difference between Range and NSRange?
• How does String Indices work?
• How to create Range from String Indices?
• How to get substring with Range?
• How to get substring with NSRange?

Warning of attempt to present view controller is common occurrence when making an easily made mistake. I will take Alert controller for an example to discuss.

Lets’s create a scenario to bring UIAlertController warning message and observe side effect to understand our situation more effectively. Then we will understand on how to fix warning attempt to present UIAlertController. I will present a Detail view controller modally from Main controller, and Main controller will be delegate object assigned to the property of Detail view controller. In our presented view controller I have a dismiss code when back button is pressed. Before dismissing the controller I will call the delegate object - Main controller in this case - to present Alert controller from Main controller.