The following code was mentioned at WWDC 2015:
protocol Drawable {
func isEqualTo(other: Drawable) -> Bool
func draw()
}
extension Drawable where Self : Equatable {
func isEqualTo(other: Drawable) -> Bool {
if let o = other as? Self { return self == o }
return false
}
}
I'm a little confused on this whole protocol extension thing. Why would they have isEqualTo(other: Drawable) -> Bool in the Drawable protocol and then only extend when self is equatable? Why should isEqualTo be a required method for all Drawable objects? From my view, if a new class/struct hasn't implemented Equatable, the objects don't have the capability to be logically checked for equality, so they couldn't implement an equatable method. I think it would make more sense to have it be an optional implementation. Where is the fault in my logic?
The problem being solved is a limitation of generics.
Let's say we have a Bird struct and Insect struct. A generic equatable lets us define == where the actual object types are the same type. So we can make Bird adopt Equatable so that if we have b1 and b2 both typed as Bird we can decide whether they are equal. And we can make Insect adopt Equatable so that if we have i1 and i2 both typed as Insect we can decide whether they are equal.
But now suppose both Bird and Insect adopt the Flier protocol. You cannot make Flier adopt Equatable, because there's a limitation in how generics work. So if two objects are typed as Flier, you have no way of implementing equatability for them.
The video demonstrates that protocol extensions solve this problem. With a protocol extension on Flier, you can define a different method that compares two Fliers and decides whether they are equal - namely, by deciding first whether they are of the same class and then applying ==. Thus you can make sense of equatability for a Flier (a protocol).
I can only guess as to why isEqualTo: is a required method for the drawable protocol. Perhaps so that whatever is drawing these things never wastes time drawing the same thing twice?
I can comment on the rest of it however.
Equatable is a Swift protocol (not available in Objective-C) which requires that there is a == operator defined for the type.
In Objective-C, there is no operator overloading. Moreover, in Objective-C, using == to compare objects simply compares their pointers. If the objects are the same object (same memory location), == returns true. If we want to see if the objects are different objects but still considered equal, we must use isEqualTo:. This is a method defined by NSObject and the default implementation simply returns the result of == comparison. But classes tend to override this.
In Swift, == has different behavior. In Swift, == returns behaves similarly to how we expect the isEqualTo: method to behave in Objective-C. That's because Swift has the === operator for comparing references. === returns true if these objects are the same (same memory location), but == is a custom implemented method that determines whether the objects are considered equal even if they are in different memory locations.
So I'm guessing the Drawable protocol has Objective-C classes in mind when it declares isEqualTo: as one of its required methods.
We could alternatively write the Drawable protocol as such:
protocol Drawable: Equatable {
func draw()
}
From a strictly Swift perspective, this is a roughly equivalent protocol definition. But this means that whoever is using Drawable objects expects to compare them with == in Swift rather than isEqualTo:. And moreover, this means if we want to use any Objective-C defined objects with the protocol, now we must implement a custom == function for each of them, which most likely looks like this:
func == (left ObjCClass, right ObjCClass) -> Bool {
return left.isEqualTo(right)
}
But we have to do this for every Objective-C class we want to define as Drawable.
The alternative is to define our protocol as you presented it, using isEqualTo:, a very commonplace Objective-C method.
Now, to make all of our Swift types conform to Drawable, all we have to do is implement the draw() method and conform to Equatable. As long as we conform to Equatable, the extension will add the isEqualTo: method to our Swift type as a simple return left == right effectively (and the existence of the == method is what the Equatable protocol guarantees).
Related
I am on Swift 5. I have a protocol:
protocol Pipe {
associatedtype T
func await() -> Void
func yield( to: Any, with listener: Selector ) -> Void
}
And I would like to reference an instance of this protocol somewhere in code. That is, I want foo : , or a variable of generic type T implementing Pipe. Per this documentation: https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/ReferenceManual/GenericParametersAndArguments.html
I tried writing:
var imageSource: <Pipe T>
and any permutation of said symbols, ie imageSource: but the syntax is wrong across all cases.
In fact, T conform to two protocols, Renderable and Pipe, so I really want:
var imageSource: <Pipe, Renderable T>
Syntax wise this is gibberish, but semantically it's not an uncommon use case.
__________________ EDIT after two answers have been given __________
I tried simplifying the Pipe protocol for this post, but now I realize I simplified it too much. In my code base it's
protocol Pipe {
associatedtype T
func await() -> Void
func yield( to: Any, with listener: Selector ) -> Void
func batch() -> [T]
}
That's why there's a T there. But it's not crucial, I can drop the batch() -> [T] if I am able to write what I want above.
An associated type is used when you want your protocol to work with a variety of types, think a Container protocol that might have several methods all dealing with one contained type.
But your protocol is not that, it doesn't need to know any other types to specify the necessary behavior, so get rid of the associated type.
protocol Pipe {
func await() -> Void
func yield( to: Any, with listener: Selector ) -> Void
}
class Foo {
var imageSource: Pipe & Renderable
}
This is called a generalized existential, and is not available in Swift. A protocol with an associated type describes other types; it is not a type itself and cannot be the type of a variable, or put into a collection.
This specific protocol doesn't make a lot of sense, since you don't use T anywhere. But what you would need to do is pull this into the containing type:
struct Something<Source> where Source: Pipe & Renderable {
var imageSource: Source
}
I suspect you really want to redesign this in a different way, however. This looks like a fairly common misuse of protocols. You probably want Pipe and Renderer types that are structs (or even just functions). Without knowing what the calling code looks like, I can't say precisely how you would design it.
If you remove T (which isn't being used here), then Max's answer will address this issue. Protocols without associated types have an implicit existential type, and so you can treat them somewhat as "normal" types (assigning them to variables or putting them in collections).
I'm aware of Swift's higher-order functions like Map, Filter, Reduce and FlatMap, but I'm not aware of any like 'All' or 'Any' which return a boolean that short-circuit on a positive test while enumerating the results.
For instance, consider you having a collection of 10,000 objects, each with a property called isFulfilled and you want to see if any in that collection have isFulfilled set to false. In C#, you could use myObjects.Any(obj -> !obj.isFulfilled) and when that condition was hit, it would short-circuit the rest of the enumeration and immediately return true.
Is there any such thing in Swift?
Sequence (and in particular Collection and Array) has a (short-circuiting) contains(where:) method taking a boolean predicate as argument. For example,
if array.contains(where: { $0 % 2 == 0 })
checks if the array contains any even number.
There is no "all" method, but you can use contains() as well
by negating both the predicate and the result. For example,
if !array.contains(where: { $0 % 2 != 0 })
checks if all numbers in the array are even. Of course you can define a custom extension method:
extension Sequence {
func allSatisfy(_ predicate: (Iterator.Element) -> Bool) -> Bool {
return !contains(where: { !predicate($0) } )
}
}
If you want to allow "throwing" predicates in the same way as the
contains method then it would be defined as
extension Sequence {
func allSatisfy(_ predicate: (Iterator.Element) throws -> Bool) rethrows -> Bool {
return try !contains(where: { try !predicate($0) } )
}
}
Update: As James Shapiro correctly noticed, an allSatisfy method has been added to the Sequence type in Swift 4.2 (currently in beta), see
SE-0027 Add an allSatisfy algorithm to Sequence
(Requires a recent 4.2 developer snapshot.)
One other thing that you can do in Swift that is similar to "short circuiting" in this case is to use the lazy property of a collection, which would change your implementation to something like this:
myObjects.lazy.filter({ !$0.isFulfilled }).first != nil
It's not exactly the same thing you're asking for, but might help provide another option when dealing with these higher-order functions. You can read more about lazy in Apple's docs. As of this edit the docs contain the following:
var lazy: LazyCollection> A view onto this collection
that provides lazy implementations of normally eager operations, such
as map and filter.
var lazy: LazySequence> A sequence containing the same
elements as this sequence, but on which some operations, such as map
and filter, are implemented lazily.
If you had all the objects in that array, they should conform to some protocol, which implements the variable isFulfilled... as you can see, you could make these objects confrom to (let's call it fulFilled protocol)... Now you can cast that array into type [FulfilledItem]... Now you can continue as usually
I am pasting code here for your better understanding:
You see, you cannot extend Any or AnyObject, because AnyObject is protocol and cannot be extended (intended by Apple I guess), but you can ,,sublass" the protocol or as you like to call it professionally - Make protocol inheriting from AnyObject...
protocol FulfilledItem: AnyObject{
var isFulfilled: Bool {get set}
}
class itemWithTrueValue: FulfilledItem{
var isFulfilled: Bool = true
}
class itemWithFalseValue: FulfilledItem{
var isFulfilled: Bool = false
}
var arrayOfFulFilled: [FulfilledItem] = [itemWithFalseValue(),itemWithFalseValue(),itemWithFalseValue(),itemWithFalseValue(),itemWithFalseValue(),itemWithFalseValue()]
let boolValue = arrayOfFulFilled.contains(where: {
$0.isFulfilled == false
})
Now we've got ourselves a pretty nice looking custom protocol inheriting all Any properties + our beautiful isFulfilled property, which we will handle now as usually...
According to apple docs:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/TypeCasting.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014097-CH22-ID342
AnyObject is only for reference types (classes), Any is for both value and reference types, so I guess it is prefered to inherit AnyObject...
Now you cast instead AnyObject into Array the protocol Item FulfilledItem and you will have beautiful solution (don't forget every item to conform to that protocol and set the value...)
Wish happy coding :)
Lets say I have two protocols:
protocol TheirPcol {}
protocol MyPcol {
func extraFunc()
}
What I want to do is to create a protocol extension for 'TheirPcol' which lets extraFunc() work on anything which conforms to 'TheirPcol'. So something like this:
extension TheirPcol : MyPcol { // Error 'Extension of protocol 'TheirPcol' cannot have an inheritance clause.
func extraFunc() { /* do magic */}
}
struct TheirStruct:TheirPcol {}
let inst = TheirStruct()
inst.extraFunc()
The kicker in this is that 'TheirPcol', 'TheirStruct' are all handled by an external API which I do not control. So I'm passed the instance 'inst'.
Can this be done? Or am I going to have to do something like this:
struct TheirStruct:TheirPcol {}
let inst = TheirStruct() as! MyPcol
inst.extraFunc()
It seems there are two use-cases of why you may want to do what you are doing. In the first use-case, Swift will allow you to do what you want, but not very cleanly in the second use-case. I'm guessing you fall into the second category, but I'll go through both.
Extending the functionality of TheirPcol
One reason why you might want to do this is simply to give extra functionality to TheirPcol. Just like the compiler error says, you cannot extend Swift protocols to conform to other protocols. However, you can simply extend TheirPcol.
extension TheirPcol {
func extraFunc() { /* do magic */ }
}
Here, you are giving all objects that conform to TheirPcol the method extraFunc() and giving it a default implementation. This accomplishes the task of extending functionality for the objects conforming to TheirPcol, and if you want it to apply to your own objects as well then you could conform your objects to TheirPcol. In many situations, however, you want to keep MyPcol as your primary protocol and just treat TheirPcol as conforming to MyPcol. Unfortunately, Swift does not currently support protocol extensions declaring conformance to other protocols.
Using TheirPcol objects as if they were MyPcol
In the use case (most likely your use case) where you really do need the separate existence of MyPcol, then as far as I am aware there is no clean way to do what you want yet. Here's a few working but non-ideal solutions:
Wrapper around TheirPcol
One potentially messy approach would be to have a struct or class like the following:
struct TheirPcolWrapper<T: TheirPcol>: MyPcol {
var object: T
func extraFunc() { /* Do magic using object */ }
}
You could theoretically use this struct as an alternative to casting, as in your example, when you need to make an existing object instance conform to MyPcol. Or, if you have functions that accept MyPcol as a generic parameter, you could create equivalent functions that take in TheirPcol, then convert it to TheirPcolWrapper and send it off to the other function taking in MyPcol.
Another thing to note is if you are being passed an object of TheirPcol, then you won't be able to create a TheirPcolWrapper instance without first casting it down to an explicit type. This is due to some generics limitations of Swift. So, an object like this could be an alternative:
struct TheirPcolWrapper: MyPcol {
var object: MyPcol
func extraFunc() { /* Do magic using object */ }
}
This would mean you could create a TheirPcolWrapper instance without knowing the explicit type of the TheirPcol you are given.
For a large project, though, both of these could get messy really fast.
Extending individual objects using a child protocol
Yet another non-ideal solution is to extend each object that you know conforms to TheirPcol and that you know you wish to support. For example, suppose you know that ObjectA and ObjectB conform to TheirPcol. You could create a child protocol of MyPcol and then explicitly declare conformance for both objects, as below:
protocol BridgedToMyPcol: TheirPcol, MyPcol {}
extension BridgedToMyPcol {
func extraFunc() {
// Do magic here, given that the object is guaranteed to conform to TheirPcol
}
}
extension ObjectA: BridgedToMyPcol {}
extension ObjectB: BridgedToMyPcol {}
Unfortunately, this approach breaks down if there are a large number of objects that you wish to support, or if you cannot know ahead of time what the objects will be. It also becomes a problem when you don't know the explicit type of a TheirPcol you are given, although you can use type(of:) to get a metatype.
A note about Swift 4
You should check out Conditional conformances, a proposal accepted for inclusion in Swift 4. Specifically, this proposal outlines the ability to have the following extension:
extension Array: Equatable where Element: Equatable {
static func ==(lhs: Array<Element>, rhs: Array<Element>) -> Bool { ... }
}
While this is not quite what you are asking, at the bottom you'll find "Alternatives considered", which has a sub-section called "Extending protocols to conform to protocols", which is much more what you're trying to do. It provides the following example:
extension Collection: Equatable where Iterator.Element: Equatable {
static func ==(lhs: Self, rhs: Self) -> Bool {
// ...
}
}
Then states the following:
This protocol extension would make any Collection of Equatable elements Equatable, which is a powerful feature that could be put to good use. Introducing conditional conformances for protocol extensions would exacerbate the problem of overlapping conformances, because it would be unreasonable to say that the existence of the above protocol extension means that no type that conforms to Collection could declare its own conformance to Equatable, conditional or otherwise.
While I realize you're not asking for the ability to have conditional conformances, this is the closest thing I could find regarding discussion of protocols being extended to conform to other protocols.
Since Swift allows us using both Protocol and Generic as parameter types in a function, the scenario below has come into my mind:
protocol AProtocol {
var name: String{ get }
}
class ClassA: AProtocol {
var name = "Allen"
}
func printNameGeneric<T: AProtocol>(param: T) {
print(param.name)
}
func printNameProtocol(param: AProtocol) {
print(param.name)
}
The first function uses generic as parameter type with a type constraint, and the second function uses protocol as the parameter type directly. However, these two functions can have the same effect, which is the point confusing me. So my questions are:
What are the specific scenarios for each of them (or a case which can only be done by the specific one, but not another)?
For the given case, both functions turn out the same result. Which one is better to implement (or the pros and cons of each of them)?
This great talk has mentioned generic specialization, which is a optimization that turn the way of function dispatching from dynamic dispatching (function with non-generic parameters) to static dispatching or inlining (function with generic parameters). Since static dispatching and inlining are less expensive in contrast with dynamic dispatching, to implement functions with generic can always provide a better performance.
#Hamish also gave great information in this post, have a look for more information.
Here is a new question came to me:
struct StructA: AProtocol {
var a: Int
}
struct StructB: AProtocol {
var b: Int
}
func buttonClicked(sender: UIButton) {
var aVar: AProtocol
if sender == self.buttonA
{
aVar = StructA(a: 1)
}
else if sender == self.buttonA
{
aVar = StructB(b: 2)
}
foo(param: aVar)
}
func foo<T: AProtocol>(param: T) {
//do something
}
If there are several types conform to a Protocol, and are pass in to a generic function in different conditions dynamically. As shown above, pressing different buttons will pass different types(StructA or StructB) of parameter into function, would the generic specialization still work in this case?
There is actually a video from this year's WWDC about that (it was about performance of classes, structs and protocols; I don't have a link but you should be able to find it).
In your second function, where you pass a any value that conforms to that protocol, you are actually passing a container that has 24 bytes of storage for the passed value, and 16 bytes for type related information (to determine which methods to call, ergo dynamic dispatch). If the passed value is now bigger than 24 bytes in memory, the object will be allocated on the heap and the container stores a reference to that object! That is actually extremely time consuming and should certainly be avoided if possible.
In your first function, where you use a generic constraint, there is actually created another function by the compiler that explicitly performs the function's operations upon that type. (If you use this function with lots of different types, your code size may, however, increase significantly; see C++ code bloat for further reference.) However, the compiler can now statically dispatch the methods, inline the function if possible and does certainly not have to allocate any heap space. Stated in the video mentioned above, code size does not have to increase significantly as code can still be shared... so the function with generic constraint is certainly the way to go!
Now we have two protocol below:
protocol A {
func sometingA()
}
protocol B {
func sometingB()
}
Then the parameter need to conform to both A and B.
//Generic solution
func methodGeneric<T:A>(t:T)where T:B {
t.sometingA()
t.sometingB()
}
//we need protocol C to define the parameter type
protocol C:A,B {}
//Protocol solution
func methodProtocol(c:C){
c.sometingA()
c.sometingB()
}
It seems that nothing is wrong but when we define a struct like this:
struct S:A,B {
func sometingB() {
print("B")
}
func sometingA() {
print("A")
}
}
The methodGeneric works but we need to change struct S:A,B to struct S:C to make methodProtocol work. Some questions:
Do we really need protocol C?
Why not would we write like func method(s:S)?
You could read more about this in the Generic Doc for additional information .
I'm working on a framework to make it easier to work with Key Value Observing and I've defined a protocol for converting native Swift types to NSObject as follows:
public protocol NSObjectConvertible {
func toNSObject () -> NSObject
}
Extending the builtin types was easy, simply defining the function to convert the given type to the appropriate NSObject:
extension Int8: NSObjectConvertible {
public func toNSObject () -> NSObject {
return NSNumber(char: self)
}
}
When I got to the Array type, I hit a number of snags, which I tried to work out. I didn't want to extend any array type, but only arrays whose element type was itself NSObjectConvertible. And naturally, needed Array to itself conform to the protocol.
After hunting around on SO, it looks like extending the Array type itself is a little harder because it's generic, but extending SequenceType can be done. Except that I can't both constrain the element type and declare its conformance to the protocol in the same declaration.
The following:
extension SequenceType where Generator.Element == NSObjectConvertible : NSObjectConvertible = {
public func toNSObject () -> NSObject {
return self.map() { return $0.toNSObject() }
}
}
Produces a compiler error:
Expected '{' in extension
And the carat points to the ":" where I'm trying to declare the protocol conformance. Removing the protocol conformance compiles without errors, but obviously doesn't help the case.
I'm not sure if this is a bug, or if Swift simply can't (or doesn't want to) support what I'm trying to do. Even if I simply define the extension, then try to take care of the conformance in the body, it produces the risk of passing sequences that don't really conform to what they should.
At best it's a hacky solution to just fail in cases where a sequence with non-conforming members are passed. I'd much rather let the compiler prevent it from happening.
(This is in Swift 2.1, Xcode 7.1.1)
You can't add the protocol conformance, unfortunately.