Skip to main content

Swift on Android

Running Swift code on Android

The biggest issue here is going to be a missing SwiftCore library. Right now Apple is shipping one for iOS, OS X and Watch OS. But that's it - and obviously they don't ship an Android version.

However, not all Swift code requires the SwiftCore library, just like not all C++ code requires the STL. So as long as we use the subset of Swift that doesn't hit SwiftCore, we should be ok.

Romain Goyet

How to Use Apple Swift to Make an Android App
Our best course of action to get something working quickly was to take Swift code and compile it into Java source code — and then take it into the Android development environment to finish building it into an installable app. So we started in Xcode, where we wrote the Swift code. Then we tested it, including running it on an iPhone or in the iPhone Simulator, and ran a custom compiler that parsed the Swift code and output Java source code (adjusting any necessary syntax, and substituting appropriate Android calls for any iOS native ones). Then we moved it into Android Studio to finish the build process and produced the Android APK.

 ArcTouch

Is it possible to make Android apps with Swift?
The big questions are:

1) Should Swift compiles to Dalvik? This probably require making a LLVM backend to Dalvik. This will be the opposite of a RoboVM approach, and there are been some tentatives to do LLVM to Bytecode, so, it might work.

2) Should Swift compiles to NDK output (Android native). This would probably be a more conventional approach for the LLVM architecture. The trick is that the NDK get a very raw API for building UI, so the developers will have to reimplement the UI component set. 

3) Should Swift be just wrapper to the "Dalvik" UI Component set, and Swift developers will have to learn the Android way of building UI, but with Swift. This will work good with #1.

4) Should Swift try to mimick the iOS MVC model and UI component as much as possible. This will probably be better with #2.


My sense is that the lowest hanging fruit (which still require quite a bit of work) is Swift compile to Dalvik bytecode (#1) with full Dalvik component/library access and be a wrapper on Android UI component and constructs (#2). Now, the question is will this be worth all of the effort.

Quora

Silver - Swift, now also on .NET, Java and Android.
Silver is a free implementation of Apple's Swift programming language.

With Silver, you can use Swift to write code directly against the .NET, Java, Android and Cocoa APIs. And you can also share a lot of non-UI code between platforms.

Built on over ten years of solid compiler knowledge and technology, Silver is a truly native Swift compiler for the .NET CLR, the Java/Android JVM and the Cocoa runtime.

Silver supports three platforms, but is decidedly not cross-platform, focusing on letting you leverage the Swift language natively for each individual platform, rather than encouraging mediocre cross-platform apps. With Silver, you can share your language and tool expertise, and you can share a lot of back-end business logic code – but you will use it to write apps targeted at each platform individually. Why? Because that's how great apps are made.

Elements

Comments

Post a Comment

Most Favorite Posts

Server-driven UI (SDUI): Meet Zalandos AppCraft and AirBnB Lona

A short WTF: Joe Birch:  SERVER DRIVEN UI, PART 1: THE CONCEPT Zalando seems to follow the SDUI principle as well - defining a common design language and construct the screens on the backend while displaying them natively on the clients. They even go one step further; they implemented a mighty toolset to enable non-technical stakeholders to define their own native app screens Compass: Web tooling to create screens and bind data Beetroot: Backend service that combines the screen layout definition with the data Lapis/Golem: iOS/Android UI render engines Crazy cool! Good job, guys (when you do an open-source release?) To even move faster a Flutter based UI render engine implementation was great! See also AirBnB Lona SDUI approach Building a Visual Language Why Dropbox sunsetted its universal C++ mobile project and AirBnB its React Native implementation
2 comments
Read more

Dark Theme (Dark Mode) in Android WebViews, WKWebViews and CSS

So your apps just implemented a shiny new dark theme and it’s looking 👌 There are lots of benefits to having a dark theme in your application, and having it consistent throughout your application allows for a great user experience. But what happens when the the user runs into a WebView in your app? Support: if (WebViewFeature.isFeatureSupported(WebViewFeature.FORCE_DARK)) { ... } Set: WebSettingsCompat.setForceDark(webView.settings, WebSettingsCompat.FORCE_DARK_ON) Current setting: val forceDarkMode = WebSettingsCompat.getForceDark(webView.settings) Joe Birch Assuming your question is asking how to change the colors of the HTML content you are displaying in a WKWebView based on whether light or dark mode is in effect, there is nothing you do in your app's code. All changes need to be in the CSS being used by your HTML content. CSS dark mode via :root variables, explicit colors and @media query: :root {     color-scheme: light dark;         --h1-color: #333;
Post a Comment
Read more

Judo App - Server Driven UI out of the box

Judo App Judo brings server-driven UI to your iOS and Android apps. Build user interfaces visually in a fraction of time and publish them instantly without submitting to the app store. Build Experiences - With No Code The Judo app for macOS, available through the App Store, is built for design professionals with common keyboard shortcuts and familiar concepts like canvas, layers and inspector panel. Workflow is streamlined with the ability to drag and drop media files directly into your experiences and manage your own Judo files in Finder. Manage Creative Execution A Judo experience is interactive and can include text, images, video and buttons. An experience may be part of a screen, a single screen, or more typically multiple linked screens. Judo supports screen transitions, carousels, horizontal scrolling and modals. Clients can add custom fonts and define global colors and these are updates applied universally. Effortlessly Deploy Judo Cloud syncs your experiences with your iOS and
Post a Comment
Read more

netfox - A lightweight, one line setup, iOS network debugging library!

A lightweight, one line setup, network debugging library that provides a quick look on all executed network requests performed by your app. It grabs all requests - of course yours, requests from 3rd party libraries (such as AFNetworking, Alamofire or else), UIWebViews, and more Very useful and handy for network related issues and bugs Implemented in Swift 2.1 - bridged also for Objective-C Start To start netfox add the following line in didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method of your AppDelegate Swift NFX.sharedInstance().start() Invoke netfox UI Just shake your device and check what's going right or wrong! Shake again and go back to your app! GitHub kasketis/netfox
Post a Comment
Read more

Backend-driven native UIs

Backend-drive native UIs John Sundell  Slide Share Using Back-End Design to Create Customizable Front-End Mobile Experiences By controlling the front end of mobile apps from the back end we can build customized experiences at runtime, creating cleaner interfaces and reducing load times. Nithin Rao UX Magazine The Hub Framework Welcome to the Hub Framework - a toolkit for building native, component-driven UIs on iOS ( no Android support released yet ). It is designed to enable teams of any size to quickly build, tweak and ship new UI features, in either new or existing apps. It also makes it easy to build backend-driven UIs. The Hub Framework has two core concepts - Components & Content Operations. Spotify LeeGo: Build UI without UIView LeeGo is a lightweight Swift framework that helps you decouple & modularise your UI component into small pieces of LEGO style's bricks, to make UI development declarative, configurable and highly reusable. Wang Sheng Jia
Post a Comment
Read more

ImageOptim

ImageOptim optimizes images — so they take up less disk space and load faster — by finding best compression parameters and by removing unnecessary comments and color profiles. It handles PNG, JPEG and GIF animations. ImageOptim seamlessly integrates various optimisation tools: PNGOUT, AdvPNG, Pngcrush, extended OptiPNG, JpegOptim, jpegrescan, jpegtran, and Gifsicle. It solves too the Xcode bug: corrupt PNG file. ImageOptim
Post a Comment
Read more

UIWebView no bounce

You can switch off the bounce effect of a UIWebView using this script: for (id subview in webView.subviews)    if ([[subview class] isSubclassOfClass: [UIScrollView class]])       ((UIScrollView *)subview).bounces = NO; Considering the Apple Review process it may be problematic that we make assumption of the inner structure of the UIWebView - but some apps have made it through...
2 comments
Read more