PIXNEST
say goodbye to boring wallpapers
Are you struggling to find new, cool wallpapers for your phone? Look no further: introducing PixNest!
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Originally created as PixFlow using UIKit, I have recently rebuilt this project from scratch using SwiftUI and bringing a number of improvements to it.
Among them, it's a cleaner codebase with an emphasis on reusable code and an improved separation of concerns where different classes are solely responsible for one category of tasks.
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PixNest leverages the Unsplash API to retrieve high-quality, portrait-oriented photos, perfect for your phone's wallpaper.
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As someone who enjoys regularly customizing my phone, this app was a double win: it allowed me to find fresh wallpapers while honing my skills with UICollectionViews, Core Data, API integration, and adhering to all requirements specified in the API documentation.
In the PixNest screen, users can either perform a custom search using a TextField or choose from pre-selected categories. Search results can then be sorted by most recent or most relevant.
Upon selecting a photo, users are presented with a full-screen, high-resolution view of the image, along with a button to download and save it locally to the Photos app. At the bottom of the screen, a link directs users to the photographer's Unsplash page, as required by the API documentation.
Another requirement specified in the docs is to send a request to the download endpoint provided under the "photo.links.download_location" propertyof the image. This request is triggered when the photo is either downloaded or added to the user's favourite images.
The "Add to Favorites" button saves the details of the image to Core Data, allowing for later retrieval in the "My Favorites" screen.
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Allowing users to mark photos as favorites enables them to easily revisit them without needing to perform a new search or save every photo immediately. For this feature, Core Data was chosen as the persistence framework.
The "My Favorites" screen operates similarly to the search results screen, with the addition of an overlay that appears upon tapping an image. This overlay reveals buttons to download the image and to remove the photo from the database.
