17 Must-have iOS Development Tools to Improve productivity

Translated from Netgurus.co by CocoaChina translator @black Tea Magician – Da Hong Pao

译 文 : 17 Must Have Tools to Speed up Development in iOS

Patryk Kaczmarek is an iOS developer

He graduated from Poznan Polytechnic University. Initially working in industrial manufacturing, but eventually decided to switch to iOS related professional development. He regards his work as a pleasure rather than a profession. He likes dark music with a bit of gothic flair, like Closterkeller and Evanescence. In life, he loves to cook, but he puts all his heart into baking.

Time is money. More efficient coding means more revenue. But when our development skills have reached a certain height, how to make development efficiency to the next level? The answer is to use development tools! In this article, I’ll introduce you to some tools that have helped me speed up my coding and become more productive.

Xcode plug-in

As almost all developers know, Alcatraz is an open source package management tool that makes it easier to manage plug-ins. Here are my top 10 plug-ins:

10.HOStringSense

As you edit a string, it generates a word count prompt at the top of the code. When you need to edit multiple lines of text, you can edit the string content in the pop-up text box, and the plug-in will automatically escape the character and update the code in real time.

Image by Dirk Holtwick

9.OMColorSense

A simple visual color plugin. When you edit the RGB value of a color, a small color block appears above the code, showing the corresponding color. Click on the color piece will pop up a color editor, the editor of color value will automatically fill in the colorWithRed: green, blue, alpha: method, sweet!

8.Derived Data Exterminator

When compiling a project, have you ever thought about a weird bug that Xcode blew up? I think the answer is yes, and we all know that one of the wrong solutions is to delete DerivedData! Although there are many ways to solve this problem, the Derived Data Exterminator is definitely the most convenient. After we integrate it into Xcode, we can clean up Derived Data in one click.

7.QuickLocalization

Are you tired of writing NSLocalizedString over and over again? If so, the QuickLocalization plugin can help. When you’re editing a String, you just press option+shift+d, and you convert @”Any String” to NSLocalizedString(@”Any String”, nil). You can also modify the configuration to define what appears in the COMMENT field. I can’t live without it!

6.KSImageNamed

In the past, I had to constantly look in the resources folder to find the right image name. The KSImageNamed plug-in automatically pops up a list of image names to choose from, as well as thumbnails for convenience.

Photo by Kent Sutherland

5.ShowInGithub

Code reviews are part of the Netguru lifestyle. Although most bugs are detected at this stage, we still find problems when using other people’s code. This is where ShowInGithub comes in. Just press CTRL +C or CTRL +G and you can immediately open a Commit or file page. Github and BitBucket support is awesome!

4.SCXcodeSwitchExpander

Switch statements are rather tedious. Although it clearly lists what should be done in each case, filling in enumerations one by one is a waste of time. The SCXcodeSwitchExpander plugin can do this for us. It can automatically get all the enumeration values to fill in the corresponding location, and we just need to fill in the corresponding logic below each enumeration value.

Image courtesy of Stefan Ceriu

3.VVDocumenter-Xcode

While it feels great to comment out all your files, have you ever wondered how much time it will take? Actually, thanks to VVDocument-Xcode, it really didn’t take much time. It automatically parses method parameters and return values and forms Javadoc-style annotations. All the open source code we write uses this plug-in.

Photo by Wei Wang

2.FuzzyAutocomplete

This plugin can automatically complete code while coding. It the power of being used to Open “Quickly” function of the same algorithm, such as, when you want to use the tableView: cellForRowAtIndexPath: “method, Instead of typing the lengthy “- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView ce” to match the method, you just need “-cellfor”, which is much easier.

Image courtesy FuzzyAutocomplete

1.XcodeBoost

This is my favorite plugin, and I can’t imagine coding without it. Through configuration, we can use the cursor or imprecise choice can cut or copy code line, can not trigger code formatting in paste code, you can also pass in. M file copy, paste into. H file can be automatically format into a method statement, there are many functions can be realized. XcodeBoost is worth it!

Image by Michael Fortin.

recommended

Most of the time, I use Xcode for coding, but I also use other apps frequently.

7.Status Barred

According to iTunes Connect Guidelines, screenshots should not include a status bar, and this tool helps us smooth out the status bar while supporting iPhone and iPad screenshots. This little app does one thing, but it does it well.

6.MacDown

Are you tired of writing Markdown files without a preview? Or are you using an editor that requires a button to be pressed to show a preview? MacDown is a handy Markdown editor that displays preview effects in real time on the right side of markdown code.

5.SimPholders

SimPholders is a simple, easy-to-use app that allows developers to quickly open emulators or recently used apps by setting a shortcut button on the Mac toolbar. Especially when you’re dealing with the contents of the app folder, you don’t have to go through the emulator and app folders again and again, just use SimPholders.

4.Network Link Conditioner

This is an official tool from Apple, it can simulate any network environment, such as 3G, Edge, etc., can also redefine the current network environment, such as network latency, bandwidth or packet loss rate. Network Link Conditioner can also be used on real computers, but you need to be careful about whether or not you use Network Conditioner.

3.Rest Console

Rest Console is a Plug-in based on Google Chrome that provides an easy-to-use Rest visualization interface to make debugging apis more fun. The Rest Console formats the returned results to make them easy to read. It also supports oAuth.

2.Chisel

Using LLDB can significantly reduce developer debugging time. Facebook has developed a set of commands for LLDB that can be very useful, especially when there are problems that are difficult to reproduce. It takes a while to get used to it, but it’s worth it.

1.SQLiteManager

SQLiteManager is a small plug-in for managing SQLite on Firefox. It’s easy to use with CoreData. I often feel that Xcode should integrate this functionality. It’s simple, and I love that.

As you can see, I use a lot of tools in my development, each of which saves me a lot of time. With them, I can focus more on the project and write better code. Are there any good tools you use in your work? If you don’t find them in this article, please share them in the comments!