{"id":688,"date":"2014-11-01T20:41:44","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T02:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/?p=688"},"modified":"2015-02-28T14:29:39","modified_gmt":"2015-02-28T20:29:39","slug":"http-json-requests-with-swift-and-alamofire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/http-json-requests-with-swift-and-alamofire\/","title":{"rendered":"HTTP JSON Requests with Swift and Alamofire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note:<\/b> See our latest post<\/a> on using Carthage for adding Alamofire to your project. You don’t need to suffer through git submodules (the method described below) any longer.<\/p>\n

It didn’t take long after the introduction of Swift to begin seeing Stackoverflow questions<\/a> asking about using AFNetworking<\/a>, the popular Objective-C framework for making HTTP requests on iOS. Of course it can be done, as Swift and Objective-C can coexist together in the same project, but there’s the Objective-C way of doing things, and then there is the Swift way. Enter Alamofire<\/a>, brought to you by the same author<\/a> as AFNetworking.<\/p>\n

As you can guess, we’re interested in using this new framework with our Swift projects. Let’s get to it shall we. This tutorial will walk you through creating a new Xcode project using Swift to make use of the MyMemory<\/a> language translator to translate simple phrases from English to Spanish. Of course we could have built an application that allowed the user to choose the source and destination languages, but we wanted to leave it as an exercise to the reader.<\/p>\n

Before you get started, I should point out that I’m using Xcode 6.1 (6A1052d). If you are using a different version, well, as they say, YMMV. While I suggest you go through this tutorial step-by-step, you can fast forward and download the working project on Bitbucket<\/a> (see the end of this post for instructions to ensure Alamofire is updated in your checkout).<\/p>\n

Start Xcode and select File – New Project<\/b> and create a Single View<\/i> iOS application. For the Product Name<\/b> we chose translator<\/code>, and of course make sure your language is Swift<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Before getting to Alamofire, let’s create a UI. Click on Main.storyboard<\/code> to bring it up.<\/p>\n

Drag four labels and a text input field to the storyboard, arranged as follows:<\/p>\n

\"alamofire_constraints\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In this example we have also added constraints to the layout. I’m by no means an expert on using Xcode constraints, but if I did it correctly the UI should look appropriate on the iPhone 5, 6, or 6 Plus. The layout should also rotate correctly.<\/p>\n

Wire up the Text Field to the view controller as an IBOutlet. In this example I’ve named it textFieldToTranslate<\/code>. Also wire up the label where we’ll display our translated text. I’ve named it translatedTextLabel<\/code>.<\/p>\n

\"alamofire_addtextfieldtotranslate\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Your IBOutlet<\/code>s in ViewController.swift<\/code> should look like:<\/p>\n

[objc]
\n @IBOutlet weak var textFieldToTranslate: UITextField!
\n @IBOutlet weak var translatedTextLabel: UILabel!
\n[\/objc]<\/p>\n

Now, let’s add the appropriate delegate methods to the view controller so we can interact with the text field. This includes:<\/p>\n