LittleFire

Lightweight networking library for basic HTTP functionality for your iOS app.

Why another networking library?

This is intended to be small. There are other small libraries out there, which are fantastic. But staying small is another thing. I have used AlamoFire and Moya extensively in my career, and love them. But sometimes you just need something small, or a corporation or client you're working with has restrictions on dependencies, or even makes the process so difficult to bring in a dependency that it's easier to write your own. The goal with LittleFire is to allow people to reuse these few files if need be, or bring in via SwiftPM.

Usage

LittleFire introduces an extension to the Codable types, originally created by my friend Ben Winters, called ResponseCodable. It is the combination of ResponseDecodable and RequestEncodable. The types you expect to decode upon an HTTP response should conform to ResponseDecodable, and the bodies you add to be encoded in a request should conform to RequestEncodable.

Start by creating a provider.

let provider = ServiceProvider()

Next, create a service. The service is generic over the type you expect to decode. It's recommended to create your own service as an enum, that conforms to the Service protocol.

provider.requestPublisher(service: MyTodoService<MyTodoObject>.getTodo(1))

Currently, LittleFire uses Combine publishers to handle async calls. So, the call above to request a MyTodoObject can be fetched like so:

provider.requestPublisher(service: MyTodoService<MyTodoObject>.getTodo(1))
  .sink { todo in self.updateUI(with: todo) }

Creating your own service might looks something like this:

import LittleFire

enum JSONPlaceholderTodoService<T>: Service where T: ResponseDecodable {
  typealias ResponseType = T

  case getTodo(Int)
}

extension JSONPlaceholderTodoService {
  var baseURL: String { "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com" }

  var path: String {
    switch self {
    case .getTodo(let id): return "todos/\(id)"
    }
  }

  var parameters: [String : Any]? { nil }
  var method: LittleFire.ServiceMethod { .get }
  var body: Data? { nil }
}

By telling the protocol that your ResponseType is the generic T, you can specify the decodable type at the callsite. So, say for instance that if you had a get case and a post case for the same endpoint, just different paths, you could have different decodable response bodies in the same Service, so long as they conform to ResponseDecodable.