New Xcode Templates

Introduction

When you create a new project in Xcode right now, this is what you typically see – and this is the template you typically use – iOS > App:

However, the resulting project:

… is not all that useful.

Each time you create a new project, for example, you will need to change from using blue folders to using grey groups, and add groups for:

• Model
• ViewModels
• Views

This gets tedious.

What if, instead, you could use a template like this:

… and get this, automatically?

Or use a template like this:

… and get this, automatically?

That is what we will set up now.

Install the new templates

To install these templates, begin by opening the Terminal app on your Mac.

You can use activate Spotlight using the Command-Spacebar keyboard shortcut to search for and then open Terminal:

You will see a window that looks something like this appear:

Now, please copy this entire command into your clipboard, then paste it into the Terminal window, and press the Return key to actually run the command:

curl -sL https://www.russellgordon.ca/lcs/templates.zip -o /tmp/templates.zip && unzip -qo /tmp/templates.zip -d /tmp/lcs-templates && chmod +x /tmp/lcs-templates/templates/install_lcs_templates.sh && /tmp/lcs-templates/templates/install_lcs_templates.sh && rm -rf /tmp/templates.zip /tmp/lcs-templates

TIP

What that command does, step by step:

Part	Purpose
curl -sL https://www.russellgordon.ca/lcs/templates.zip -o /tmp/templates.zip	Download silently (-s), following redirects (-L), saving to /tmp/templates.zip
unzip -qo /tmp/templates.zip -d /tmp/lcs-templates	Extract quietly, overwriting existing files (-qo) into a temporary folder, preserving the folder structure
chmod +x /tmp/lcs-templates/templates/install_lcs_templates.sh	Make the install script executable
/tmp/lcs-templates/templates/install_lcs_templates.sh	Run the install script, which copies the templates to ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Templates/
rm -rf /tmp/templates.zip /tmp/lcs-templates	Remove the downloaded zip file and the extracted folder

After running that command, your Terminal window should look like this (you might need to resize to see the output without wrapping):

Then, restart Xcode, by quitting it using the Command-Q keyboard shortcut, then launching the app again.

Application templates

When you have closed and then opened Xcode again, the application templates should be visible when creating a new project:

File templates

When you add a new file to an existing project using a template:

… you should now also have the choice of adding an example file intended to be used as a model, view model, or view:

Here an example of the resulting file, if the name Sum was chosen: