Reminder: iOS's UICollectionView Added an Item Property to NSIndexPath

TL;DR	Use the item property on NSIndexPath for UICollectionView instead of row from UITableView

Just realized I littered a UICollectionViewController with calls to indexPath.row when I should have been using indexPath.item. I didn’t see any bad behavior, but should use the right property for the job!

Reference:

NSIndexPath UIKit Additions (Web)

Workaround for iOS Simulator Not Sending Current Location to Your App

TL;DR	Click the Debug -> Location -> Apple menu.

Versions:	OS X 10.10.2	Xcode 6.1.1	iOS SDK 8.0	iOS Simulator 8.1 (550.3)

I often reset the iOS Simulator to quickly wipe out installed apps, settings, keychain items, etc. After a reset maneuver, the simulator often refuses to deliver the the users current location. I usually have a Custom Location (as pictured in the screenshot to the right) configured to get back to the same place every run.

When the simulator gets stuck, a quick workaround is to change the location to a pre-defined one, e.g. Apple. It kind of feels like Han Solo smacking the Millennium Falcon to get it to power on in Empire Strikes Back!

Just click the Debug -> Location -> Apple menu.

Reason Why Your Storyboard Defined UICollectionViewCells Are Blank on Run

TL;DR	Remove the / do not add a call to... self.collectionView.registerClass in viewDidLoad

Versions:	OS X 10.10.2	Xcode 6.1.1	iOS SDK 8.0

When you run your app to see your collection view, does it look like this? 
This isn’t your first rodeo, you’ve implemented UICollectionView before, but maybe it’s been a while.

You want to do it The Right Way™, using all the modern stuff like Storyboards, and then this happens!
What's gone wrong?

You have what seems like a reasonable line of code in viewDidLoad that UICollectionView is choking on!

How You Could Have Got Here...

Let’s say you created a UICollectionViewController in a Storyboard or a UICollectionView in a plain old UIViewController. You’re confident, not cocky, but you know Apple’s pattern on this pretty well, so you go ahead and customize the first cell, nothing that requires code, and then add a second cell that you expect to set properties on, so it might look like this:

Best Way To Add Code for Storyboard?
Back in the day when Interface Builder was a separate app (pre Xcode 4), there was an option to auto generate class files right from within the UI. If memory serves, this would create the class file as mostly what you wanted and connected to IBActions and IBOutlets.
Since Xcode 4, you can drag actions and outlet into your source code, but the source files have to already exist. If you want to create source, the only way I can find is from the process on the left. There's some typing & option choosing which are needless because you already made those choices in your Storyboard. Worse, the source is not customized in any way from the changes you already made in the Storyboard.
Anyone have a less manual way? Let me know, I can't seem to find one.

Now you think it’s time to add code for the view controller you created in the storyboard, so you go through the File -> New -> File (or ⌘N if you do this a lot) dialogs like in the screenshots below: (your mileage may vary with different Xcode versions)
 

 

The code template that's used for a UICollectionViewController seems like a reasonable starting point. It adds the following line to viewDidLoad:

Obj-C	[self.collectionView registerClass:[UICollectionViewCell class] forCellWithReuseIdentifier:reuseIdentifier];
Swift	self.collectionView!.registerClass(UICollectionViewCell.self, forCellWithReuseIdentifier: reuseIdentifier)

If you've customized the stock UICollectionViewCell in your Storyboard, the cell with the matching reuse identifier in code will cause UICollectionView to load an empty UICollectionViewCell! If you went full steam ahead and added a bunch of custom cells with matching reuse identifiers and registerCell calls in viewDidLoad, you, ah, might not figure this one out for a while.

A JS Framework On Every Table

No article or blog post has ever captured how I feel about Javascript like a JS framework on every table.

It’s not like I hate Javascript, but with limited time to invest in learning stuff outside the Apple stack, the constant turnover in JS frameworks means nothing ever really rises above the level of noise for me.

Except Angular.js! Looked like that had some heat, some staying power. Too bad Angular is breaking compatibility between 1.3 and 2.0. I’d heard many good things and even dabbled with it on a project, and thought it might be time to dive deeper, but now…*sigh*