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Create an App Template

1. Introduction

We all use apps every day to simplify and enrich our lives, but building them can seem like an overwhelming challenge. If you have an idea for an app - even a very simple idea - it could cost thousands of dollars to hire someone to create it. In reality, it's not that hard to get started. In this series, I'm going to demonstrate that you can create an app as easily as you can build something out of Lego.

Together, we will:

1. Visually create real engineered components.

2. Assemble them like Lego blocks.

3. Run the app on an iPhone.

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorise or endorse this tutorial series.
The app we build will be truly "native". We will use Apple's toolset to build an app that is "native" to the iOS platform. It will be a real app, not built with some prototyping tool or as a web page designed to look like an app.

The app will look something like this:

To follow along in this tutorial series, you don't need to be an expert. You only need:

1. A Mac capable of running the latest software.

2. Xcode (which we will download together in this first tutorial).

3. A working knowledge of how to use a Mac, such as how to: launch an app, double click, drag files, shift click, control click, copy and paste, and select multiple objects.

4. A desire to learn how to build an app.

If you're a designer looking for the best tool to prototype and design your app, please first read through: Build an App Like Lego - An Intro for Designers

2. Install Xcode

First, you will need Apple's Xcode software. It's free. I will be showing Xcode 10.1 in this tutorial. Although it's a relatively large (6GB) download, that's because it contains everything you need to build an app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV.

👉 On your Mac, launch the App Store and search for Xcode. Download and install it.

Depending on the speed of your Internet connection and your Mac, this can take an hour or two. So, you might want to have lunch or go on with something else for a while.

👉 Launch Xcode.

👉 When you launch Xcode for the first time, it is likely to ask permission to install more components. Allow it to do so. When it's ready, you'll see the welcome to Xcode window.

3. Create a New Project

OK. Now we're ready to build an app.

👉 Click on Create a new Xcode project.

👉 Xcode shows a bunch of templates. Choose iOS, then Tabbed App. Make sure you choose iOS or Xcode won't show you the right components for this tutorial.

👉 Click the Next button.

👁 Xcode asks you to Choose options for your new project.

We're going to call our app "Social".

👉 Enter the Product Name for your app as Social. Enter whatever you like for the Organization Name. For the Organization Identifier, enter the reverse domain name for your organization. For example, if your domain name is mycompany.com.au, enter the identifier as au.com.mycompany. If you don't have a domain name, you can just make one up or enter anything you like. You can change it later, but you can't leave it blank here.

👉 Make sure that:

1. The Language is set to Swift.

2. Include Unit Tests is off (no tick in the checkbox).

3. Include UI Tests is off.

👉 Click the Next button.

👉 Xcode asks where to save your new project. Turn on Create Git repository. We'll discuss "Git" later.

👉 Choose to save your new project in your Documents folder or wherever makes sense to you.

👉 Click the Create button to save it.

Xcode will create a folder (with the same name as your chosen Product Name) containing all of the files needed to build our app.

If you looked in the Finder, it would look like this:

Congratulations! You've just created a native iOS app!

👁 Xcode now shows your project with thousands of options, which may seem overwhelming. Don't worry. You can safely ignore almost all of them.

Let's check that we can run the app.

👉 Click on the Build and Run button (it looks like the "Play" button in iTunes) in the top left of the window.

Be patient. It will take a few minutes for Xcode to build and run the app. Xcode will launch a new Mac app called "Simulator" in a window that looks like an iPhone. It is a simulated iPhone XR (or whatever device appeared in the top left, next to the Build and Run button).

👁 At first, the iPhone screen will appear black. Eventually, you will see the app launch inside the simulated iPhone.

There - you've successfully built and run an app! It's not a fake prototype. It's a real native app. You could deploy this on the App Store. Well, you could try, but as you'd hope, Apple will reject it because it doesn't actually do anything useful - yet.

4. Xcode Panels

👉 Switch back to Xcode.

As with any window on the Mac, you can make the Xcode window larger or full screen - whatever is familiar to you.

The Xcode window is divided into several panels. Let's run through some basic tips on how to move around, hide and show these panels. Don't worry about the content or purpose of these panels for now. We will discuss that later.

The left panel is the "Navigator", currently showing the "Project Navigator" (a list of files in the project). The right panel is the "Inspector".

👉 Look at the Project Navigator (the left panel). Click once on the Main.storyboard file. Don't double click, or you'll open a new window (which you can easily close).

👁 In the centre panel (the "canvas"), you can see the flow and layout of the app. We'll talk about the flow and structure a bit later.

Especially on a small screen, like a laptop, you might need some extra room for the canvas. Fortunately, you can hide and show the left and right panels using the Show/Hide Navigators and Inspectors buttons in the top right of the window.

👉 Click on the buttons to familiarise yourself with how to hide and show the Navigator and Inspector panels.

👉 Scroll around the canvas (vertically and horizontally) using your trackpad or mouse. You can pinch to zoom or click on the - and + button at the bottom of the window:

👁 Next to the left Navigator panel, you can see another panel called the Document Outline, containing a list of "scenes". You can also hide the Document Outline panel by clicking on the button below and immediately to the right of it.

5. Edit Text

Now the fun begins.

As you might hope, you can edit items directly in this canvas.

👉 Double click on the large First View text label so that the text inside it is selected.

👉 Now, type your own label text for this scene as News.

👉 Hit Return (on the keyboard) or just click anywhere else to save this change.

👁 Notice that the tab bar item at the bottom of this scene is currently titled First. Let's change that too.

👉 Double click on the First title. You might need to zoom in first to be able to accurately select it.

🐞 If you double click the title and the title just goes blank, choose Undo from the Edit menu. This seems to be a bug in Xcode that Apple will hopefully fix.

👉 Change the title of the tab bar item to News. Hit Return to save it.

👉 Run the app again by clicking the Build and Run button in the top left of the Xcode window. If you already have the app running, Xcode will ask if you're happy for it to quit the old one in order to run the new one.

👉 Click Stop, so the new app can run.

👁 The app should now show the altered News label and tab bar item title.

6. Commit the Changes

👉 Switch back to Xcode.

Xcode has already saved our changes, so we could quit Xcode, relaunch and pick up where we left off. However, along the way, we'll be making lots of changes and might like to experiment with different ideas or go back to a version of the project that we created a few days ago. To enable us to save particular versions or milestones, we can use the " Git " version control system. Git is widely used in all programming disciplines and document control in general. Xcode provides a few menu items to access some Git commands easily.

Let's commit the changes that we've done so far, with a description of what we changed. Later, we will be able to see this in the history of our app development, and revert back if desired.

👉 In Xcode, in the Source Control menu (in the menu bar at the very top of the screen), select Commit.

👁 Xcode shows the files that we've changed. In this case, we've only changed the Main.storyboard.

👉 At the bottom of the window, where the cursor is flashing, type in a description of your changes, such as: Changed First to News

👉 Click the Commit button.

7. Recap Tutorial 1

That brings us to the end of Tutorial 1. So far, you have:

1. Installed the Apple iPhone developer toolset (Xcode).

2. Created a native iOS app.

3. Modified just a bit of it.

4. Run the app on an iPhone simulator.

5. Committed changes through Git version control.

⁉️ If you have any questions or comments, please add a response below.

In Tutorial 2, we'll start to customise the navigation flow of our app.

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Build an App Like Lego - Tutorial 1 - Build an App Like Lego - Medium

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Create an App Template We all use apps every day to simplify and enrich our lives, but building them can seem like an overwhelming challenge. If you have an idea for an app - even a very simple idea - it could cost thousands of dollars to hire someone to create it.

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