NativeScript: iOS and xCode 8 the wonderful world of breaking changes

For those who have upgraded to the all new xCode 8, you may have noticed some of the plugins breaking...     The biggest breaking change in NativeScript and xCode 8 is now things deep down in the ObjC runtime that used to be a function call are now a property.

So, for example let say you needed to access UIScreen.mainScreen.

 

 

In xCode 7 this was

var mainScreen = UIScreen.mainScreen();

in xCode 8 this is now:

var mainScreen = UIScreen.mainScreen;

Notice, it is no longer a FUNCTION call.  It is a PROPERTY.   Now how do you make this compatible so your code can run with both xCode 7 and xCode 8.

If you are developing an app; I recommend you use the helper function that Telerik added to NativeScript which they use throughout the core modules.

var utils = require('utils/utils');
var mainScreen = utils.ios.getter(UIScreen, UIScreen.mainScreen);

If you have your own plugin, then I'm going to recommend you embed my code into your own plugin...  The code is basically the same as Teleriks, but you eliminate the require call.

function iosProperty(theClass, theProperty) {
    if (typeof theProperty === "function") {
        // xCode 7 and below
        return theProperty.call(theClass);
    } else {
        // xCode 8+
        return theProperty;
    }
}

Then you use it the exact same way;

var mainScreen = iosProperty(UIScreen, UIScreen.mainScreen);

Happy NativeScripting, and hopefully you can easily get all your plugins updated shortly to support both xCode 7 & 8!