MovieDemo

A SwiftUI movie browsing app powered by the TMDB API, built to demonstrate how to use Factory and Navigator together in a modern, modular iOS application.

Features

• Browse popular, top-rated, and now-playing movies
• Explore and filter movies by genre
• Search the full TMDB catalog
• View detailed movie information including cast, crew, and similar titles
• User profile with account settings

Architecture

The application is split into two layers: a thin Xcode project that serves as the entry point, and a Swift Package that contains virtually all of the application code.

MovieDemo/
├── MovieDemo.xcodeproj     # App target — entry point only
├── Modules/                # Swift package — all application code
│   └── Package.swift
└── Playgrounds/            # Standalone preview apps
    ├── MoviesPlayground/
    └── ProfilePlayground/

The Modules Package

All features, services, and UI live inside Modules/, a single SPM package that defines several libraries. This keeps the main app target minimal and makes each feature independently buildable and testable.

Modules/Sources/
├── App             # Root TabView, tab navigation, dependency bootstrap
├── Movies          # Home, Explore, Detail, Search, and List screens
├── Profile         # Profile view and account settings screens
├── Shared          # Models, networking client, services, common views
├── DesignSystem    # Shared UI components and styling utilities
├── MovieApp        # Slim re-export for the MoviesPlayground
└── ProfileApp      # Slim re-export for the ProfilePlayground

The main MovieDemo app target imports only the App library. Everything else is resolved transitively through the package graph.

Dependency Injection — Factory

Factory is used throughout the app for dependency injection. All services are registered on Container via AutoRegistering, so dependencies are resolved automatically at startup with no manual wiring.

// Container+Extensions.swift
extension Container {
    var movieService: Factory<MovieServices> {
        self { MovieService(client: self.movieClient()) }.singleton
    }
}

// AppDependencies.swift
extension Container: AutoRegistering {
    public func autoRegister() {
        movieApiKey.register { "YOUR_TMDB_API_KEY" }
    }
}

In debug builds, Container.setupMovieMocks() and setupMovieErrors() replaces the network client with pre-recorded responses, so every SwiftUI Preview and unit test can run without hitting the network.

Navigation — Navigator

Navigator provides type-safe, declarative navigation via ManagedNavigationStack. Each tab owns its own stack, and destinations are expressed as strongly-typed enums rather than string-based routes.

// AppView.swift
struct HomeTab: View {
    var body: some View {
        ManagedNavigationStack {
            HomeView()
        }
    }
}

// Navigation link at call site
NavigationLink(to: ProfileDestination.security) {
    ProfileSettingsRow(icon: "exclamationmark.shield", title: "Security")
}

Playground Apps

Xcode's SwiftUI Preview engine must compile the entire target that contains a view before it can render a preview. In a large app target this means every preview is slow to start — and a single compile error anywhere in the app can break all previews.

The Playgrounds solve this by providing small, standalone Xcode projects that import only the relevant module library:

Playground	Imports	Covers
MoviesPlayground	MovieApp	All Movies feature views
ProfilePlayground	ProfileApp	All Profile feature views

Because each playground depends on a focused subset of the package graph, previews rebuild in seconds rather than minutes. The #if DEBUG mock infrastructure (Movie.mock, User.mock, Container.setupMovieMocks(), etc.) is available in both playgrounds without any extra setup.

Testing

The Modules repository contains tests for Movies view models and Shared repositories and services. Theses tests are based on the aforementioned mock and error functions used for previews.

The tests are written using Swift's new Testing framework, as well as FactoryTesting's container trait so all tests are capable of running in parallel.

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository.
2. Open MovieDemo.xcodeproj.
3. Add your TMDB API key in AppDependencies.swift.
4. Build and run on a simulator or device running iOS 17+.

To work on previews, open the relevant playground project from the Playgrounds/ folder instead of the main app.

Dependencies

Package	Purpose
Factory	Dependency injection
Navigator	Type-safe navigation
Runes	Functional operators

Credits

MovieDemo is designed, implemented, and maintained by Michael Long, a Lead iOS Software Engineer and a Top 1,000 Technology Writer on Medium.

• LinkedIn: @hmlong
• Medium: @michaellong
• BlueSky: @hmlongco

That said, MovieDemo is a SwiftUI reimplementation of a demo project Bayu Kurniawan created for Construkt, a SwiftUI-like declarative development library that generates UIKit code.

Construkt, in turn, is an updated version of Builder, an open-source library I created back in the day when I wanted to use SwiftUI's' declarative syntax to build applications, but due to versioning constraints I couldn't use SwiftUI itself.

I deprecated Builder awhile back, but Bayu forked the project and is its current maintainer.

The world turns.

License

Factory is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.

Sponsors!

If you want to support my work on Factory and Navigator, consider a GitHub Sponsorship! Many levels exist for increased support and even for mentorship and company training.

Or you can just buy me a cup of coffee!

Additional Resources

• Medium: The SwiftUI Navigation Series
• Medium: The SwiftUI Dependency Injection Series
• Factory
• Navigator
• Runes