Skipping empty string with JSONEncoders swift - swift

Question

I a codable serialization extension which I use to turn my Codable struct to dictionaries, the problem I am facing is strings. I get string value from my UITextField at at times this value could be empty and as a result an empty string is decoded. How can I return nil if the value is an empty string.
extension Encodable {
var requestDictionary: [String: Any]? {
let encoder = JSONEncoder()
encoder.keyEncodingStrategy = .convertToSnakeCase
guard let data = try? encoder.encode(self) else { return nil }
return (try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data, options: .allowFragments)).flatMap { $0 as? [String: Any] }
}
}
if I have a Struct
let example = Exa(age: 10, name: "")
let dict = example.requestDictionary
print(dict)
I want it to just print ["age": 10] and return nil for the empty string

Answer 1

You can implement your own String encoding method extending KeyedEncodingContainer:
extension KeyedEncodingContainer {
mutating func encode(_ value: String, forKey key: K) throws {
guard !value.isEmpty else { return }
try encodeIfPresent(value, forKey: key)
}
}
Btw your request dictionary can be simplified as:
extension Encodable {
var dictionary: [String: Any]? {
let encoder = JSONEncoder()
encoder.keyEncodingStrategy = .convertToSnakeCase
return try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: encoder.encode(self)) as? [String: Any]
}
}
Playground testing:
struct Exa: Encodable {
let age: Int
let name: String
}
let example = Exa(age: 10, name: "")
let dict = example.dictionary!
print(dict) // "["age": 10]\n"

Answer 2

I'll just another approach using a property wrapper to mark which properties could be skipped.
#propertyWrapper
struct SkipEmpty {
var wrappedValue: String
}
extension SkipEmpty: Codable {
init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
let container = try decoder.singleValueContainer()
self.wrappedValue = try container.decode(String.self)
}
func encode(to encoder: Encoder) throws {
// nothing to do here, see below
}
}
But to actually skip, you'd also need to create a overload for the KeyedEncodingContainer.encode method for the SkipEmpty type:
extension KeyedEncodingContainer {
mutating func encode(_ value: SkipEmpty, forKey key: K) throws {
if !value.wrappedValue.isEmpty {
try encode(value.wrappedValue, forKey: key) // encode the value here
}
}
}
You could possibly try to make it more generic, e.g. SkipEmpty<T: Codable> and provide another argument for the value to skip or a predicate, etc...
The usage is:
struct Exa: Encodable {
var age: Int
#SkipEmpty var name: String
}