Designing Dependencies: Core Location

Fully controlling the dependency in a type we own allowed us to reimagine and modernize its API using Combine, a framework that didn’t even exist when NWPathMonitor was first introduced. We were able to clean up a lot of messy logic in our view model around starting and canceling the monitor by baking it into the publisher’s lifecycle. And what we’re seeing here is that this style of dependency is even more flexible in allowing us to evolve APIs. Had we merely slapped a protocol onto NWPathMonitor to control it, we may have not been so bold as to rethink its design.

We now have a weather app that is perfectly useful for the inhabitants of New York City. 😂 It’d be nice for it to be useful to folks in any location, though. So let’s introduce yet another dependency, Core Location, so that we can fetch a user’s local weather, instead. Core Location is our most complex dependency yet. It employs manager objects and delegates to handle a complex state machine of events out in the real world.