📖 Practical Server Side Swift

Vapor 4 code samples for the Practical Server Side Swift book available on Gumroad.

Chapter 1: Introduction is an introduction to the Server side Swift world, explaining the evolution of Swift as a universal programming language. We'll talk about both the strengths and weaknesses of the language and discuss why Swift is a good choice to build backend applications. We'll explore the Swift ecosystem and the open-source movement that made it possible to create the necessary tools on Linux to turn Swift into a server side language. You'll get introduced to Vapor, the most popular web application framework that we're going to use in this book.

Chapter 2: Getting started with Vapor contains detailed instructions about how to install all the required components to build server side Swift applications both on Linux and macOS. You'll meet some command line tools that can help your every day life as a backend developer and we'll create our very first Vapor project using the Swift Package Manager. We'll also set up Vapor toolbox a handy little tool that can help you to bootstrap projects based on a template. In the very last section we will briefly take a look at the architecture of a Vapor application.

In Chapter 3: Getting started with SwiftHtml, we're going to build our first website using the SwiftHtml library. We are going to generate HTML code through Swift by creating template files using a Domain Specific Language (DSL). You'll learn about how to connect SwiftHtml with Vapor and how to render HTML by using context variables to provide additional template data. You'll learn about the syntax of SwiftHtml, how to iterate through objects, how to check optional variables and how to extend a base template and provide a reusable frame for our website. We'll build a simple blog layout with post list and detail pages.

In Chapter 4: Getting started with Fluent, you'll learn about the Fluent ORM framework and the advantages of using such tool instead of writing raw database queries. We'll setup Fluent powered by the SQLite driver, and model our database fields using property wrappers in Swift. We are going to provide a seed for our database, get familiar with migration scripts and make some changes on the website, so it can query blog posts from the local database and render them using view templates.

In Chapter 5: Sessions and user authentication, we are going to focus on building a session based web authentication layer. Users will be able to sign in using a form, and already logged in users will be detected with the help of a session cookie and a persistent session storage using Fluent. In the second half of this chapter I'll show you how to create custom authenticator middlewares that'll allow you to authenticate users based on sessions or credentials.

Chapter 6: Abstract forms and form fields, is all about creating an abstract form builder that we can use to generate HTML forms. We're going to define reusable from fields with corresponding context objects using a model view view-model like architecture. This will allow us to compose all kind of input forms by reusing the generic fields. In the second half of the chapter we're going to talk about processing user input, loading and persisting data using a protocol oriented solution. Finally we're going to rebuild our already existing user login form by using the components.

In Chapter 7: Form events and async validation, we're going to work a little bit on our form components. We're going to implement more event handler methods and you're going to learn the preferred way of calling them in order to build a proper create or update workflow flow. The second half of the chapter is all about building an asynchronous validation mechanism for the abstract forms. We're going to build several form field validators and finally you'll see how to work with these validators and display user errors to improve the overall experience.

In Chapter 8: Advanced form fields, is all about building new form fields that we're going to use later on. You'll learn how to build custom form fields based on the abstract form field class, so by the end of this chapter you should be able to create even more form fields to fit your needs. We're also going to introduce a brand new Swift package called Liquid, which is a file storage driver made for Vapor. By using this library we're going to be able to create a form field for uploading images.

In Chapter 9: Content Management System, you'll learn abut how to build a basic content management system with an admin interface. We are going to create a standalone module for the admin views, which will be completely separated from the web frontend. The CMS will support list, detail, create, update and delete functionality. Models are going to be persisted to the database and we'll secure the admin endpoints by using a new built-in middleware.

Chapter 10: Building a generic admin interface, is about turning our basic CMS into a generic solution. By leveraging the power of Swift protocols we're going to be able to come up with several base controllers that can be used to manage database models through the admin interface. This methodology allows us to easily define list, create, update and delete controllers. By the end of this chapter we're going to have a completely working admin solution for the blog module.

Chapter 11: A basic REST API layer, you'll learn abut building a standard JSON based API service. In the first section we will discuss how to design a REST API, then we will build the CRUD endpoints for the category controller. We'll talk a bit about the HTTP layer, learn how to use the cURL command line utility to test the endpoints. You'll discover why it is a better practice to use standalone data transfer objects instead of exposing database models to the public.

Chapter 12: Building a generic REST API, this chapter contains useful materials about how to turn our REST API layer into a reusable generic solution. We're going to define common protocols that'll allow us to share some of the logic between the admin and API controllers. The first part is going to be all about the controller updates, but later on this chapter we're also going to improve the routing mechanism by introducing new setup methods for the route handlers.

Chapter 13: API protection and validation, is about making the backend service more secure by introducing better API protection and validation methods. The first part is about user authentication through bearer tokens. We're going to create a new token based authenticator and guard the API endpoints from unauthenticated requests. The second part is going to be all about data validation by using the async validator logic that we've created a few chapters before. In the very last section of this chapter we're going to introduce some additional lifecycle methods for the controllers.

Chapter 14: System under testing, is about learning the brand new XCTVapor framework. First we'll set up the test environment, write some basic unit tests for our application and run them. Next we are going to dig a little bit deeper in the XCTVapor framework so you can see how to write more complex tests. In the last part you will meet with a super lightweight and clean testing tool. The Spec library will allow us to write declarative specifications for our test cases.

Chapter 15: Event driven hook functions, in this chapter we're going to eliminate the dependencies between the modules by introducing a brand new event-driven architecture. By using hook functions we're going to be able to build connections without the need of importing the interface of a module into another. The EDA design pattern allows us to create loosely coupled software components and services without forming an actual dependency between the participants.

Chapter 16: Shared API library packages, teaches you how to separate the data transfer object layer into a standalone Swift package product, this way you'll be able to share server side Swift code with client apps. In the first part of the chapter I am going to show you how to setup the project and we're going to add access control modifiers to allow other modules to see our DTOs. The second half of the chapter is going to give you some really basic examples about how to perform HTTP requests using the modern Swift concurrency APIs.

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