Introduce swift data
Generated on 3/4/2025
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Swift Data is a framework introduced with iOS 17 that allows developers to model and persist app data across all of Apple's platforms using Swift. It leverages modern Swift language features, such as macros, to provide a fast, efficient, and safe way to handle data. Swift Data not only offers persistence but also supports modeling, schema migration, graph management, and synchronization with CloudKit.
Key features of Swift Data include:
- Modeling and Persistence: Swift Data makes it easy to build your app's model layer and persist it across app launches. You can define your schema with minimal additions to a Swift class using the model macro.
- Custom Data Stores: You can use custom data stores to persist data using alternative backends like SQLite, a remote web service, or JSON files. This flexibility allows you to use Swift Data's API with various storage solutions.
- History Tracking: Swift Data provides access to the history of changes in a datastore, which is useful for tracking local changes that need to be synced to a remote service.
- Query Optimization: New macros like #Index and #Unique help optimize queries by indexing commonly queried properties and ensuring unique entries in a set of properties.
For more detailed information, you can refer to the session What’s new in SwiftData (00:00:07).
Create a custom data store with SwiftData
Combine the power of SwiftData’s expressive, declarative modeling API with your own persistence backend. Learn how to build a custom data store and explore how to progressively add persistence features in your app. To get the most out of this session, watch “Meet SwiftData” and “Model your schema with SwiftData” from WWDC23.
Platforms State of the Union
Discover the newest advancements on Apple platforms.
Track model changes with SwiftData history
Reveal the history of your model’s changes with SwiftData! Use the history API to understand when data store changes occurred, and learn how to use this information to build features like remote server sync and out-of-process change handing in your app. We’ll also cover how you can build support for the history API into a custom data store.
A Swift Tour: Explore Swift’s features and design
Learn the essential features and design philosophy of the Swift programming language. We’ll explore how to model data, handle errors, use protocols, write concurrent code, and more while building up a Swift package that has a library, an HTTP server, and a command line client. Whether you’re just beginning your Swift journey or have been with us from the start, this talk will help you get the most out of the language.
What’s new in SwiftData
SwiftData makes it easy to add persistence to your app with its expressive, declarative API. Learn about refinements to SwiftData, including compound uniqueness constraints, faster queries with #Index, queries in Xcode previews, and rich predicate expressions. Join us to explore how you can use all of these features to express richer models and improve performance in your app. To discover how to build a custom data store or use the history API in SwiftData, watch “Create a custom data store with SwiftData” and “Track model changes with SwiftData history”.
What’s new in Swift
Join us for an update on Swift. We’ll briefly go through a history of Swift over the past decade, and show you how the community has grown through workgroups, expanded the package ecosystem, and increased platform support. We’ll introduce you to a new language mode that achieves data-race safety by default, and a language subset that lets you run Swift on highly constrained systems. We’ll also explore some language updates including noncopyable types, typed throws, and improved C++ interoperability.