Sub enumeration rawValue - swift

Question

Consider the following code, where I declared an enum with sub enums inside of it.
enum LocalizeKey {
case message(Messages)
case buttons(Buttons)
enum Buttons: String {
case remove = "Remove"
case add = "Add"
}
enum Messages: String {
case success = "Success"
case failure = "Failure"
}
}
In a normal enum with no sub enums we can easily access .rawValue property and get the raw value of whatever case we picked.
For this case, i created a function like this just to check out what am i getting .
func keyString(for type: LocalizeKey) {
print(type)
}
keyString(for: .message(.failure)) // usage
Problem : there are no other properties than .self to access for this LocalizeKey enum .
What I am trying to achieve: perhaps you can relate by the naming, i am trying to wrap my localized keys, so i can access them easily based on the key type etc, and the rawValue that is refering to the actual key will go into the getLocalizedValue function .
Playground Output : using the function above the playground output was
message(__lldb_expr_21.LocalizeKey.Messages.failure)
Edit: without having to create a variable that switches self on every case, imagine if we had +400 key that would be a huge mess probably.

Answer 1

You need to switch on the type parameter and do pattern matching:
switch type {
case .message(let messages): return messages.rawValue
case .buttons(let buttons): return buttons.rawValue
}
You can also make this an extension of LocalizeKey:
extension LocalizeKey {
var keyString: String {
switch self {
case .message(let messages): return messages.rawValue
case .buttons(let buttons): return buttons.rawValue
}
}
}

Answer 2

You are going to have to switch somewhere. If there are only a handful of "sub-enums", it is probably the easiest to just write a switch manually:
func keyString(for type: LocalizeKey) {
switch type {
case .message(let message):
print(message.rawValue)
case .buttons(let button):
print(button.rawValue)
}
}
If you don't want to write this manually, you either have to change your data structure so it is not needed, or use a code generation tool that generates the boilerplate for you.

Answer 3

Although The mentioned answers do provide the solution, I'd mention the issue of the approach itself:
At this point, each new case (key) has to be added in your switch statement with an associated value, which seems to be undesired boilerplate coding; I assume that you could imagine how it will look like when having many cases in the enums.
Therefore, I'd recommend to follow an approach to be more dynamic instead of adding the value of each case manually in a switch statement. Example:
protocol Localizable {
var value: String { get }
}
extension RawRepresentable where Self: Localizable, Self.RawValue == String {
var value: String { return rawValue }
}
extension CustomStringConvertible where Self: RawRepresentable, Self.RawValue == String {
var description: String { return rawValue }
}
struct LocalizeKey {
enum Buttons: String, Localizable, CustomStringConvertible {
case remove = "Remove"
case add = "Add"
}
enum Messages: String, Localizable, CustomStringConvertible {
case success = "Success"
case failure = "Failure"
}
}
We are applying the same logic for your code, with some improvements to make it easier to maintain.
Based on that, you still able to implement your function as:
func keyString(for type: Localizable) {
print(type)
}
Usage:
keyString(for: LocalizeKey.Buttons.add) // Add
keyString(for: LocalizeKey.Messages.success) // Success
IMO, I find calling it this way seems to be more readable, straightforward rather than the proposed approach (keyString(for: .message(.failure))).