Understanding Data Change Management in iOS Development

Key Options and Best Practices

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Handling data changes is essential in order to deliver smooth, responsive apps.

This article is going to cover six key ways iOS developers can use to manage data updates, covering the strengths, weaknesses and use cases for each.

Key-Value Observing (KVO)

Closures

Delegates

NotificationCenter

Combine

Async/await

Environment Object

The short version

Here is a simple table showing the strengths and weaknesses of the data update mechanisms.

Key Options and Best Practices

Key-Value Observing (KVO)

KVO is a mechanism in Objective-C and Swift for observing changes to properties. When an observed property changes, it triggers notifications that other objects can react to.