Sending data to another view: can't unwrap option - swift

Question

I know that this has to be a simple fix, but can't seem to understand why my code is not working. Basically I am trying to send a value from a text field in 1 view to a 2nd view's label.
ViewController.swift
#IBOutlet var Text1st: UITextField
#IBAction func Goto2ndView(sender: AnyObject) {
let view2 = self.storyboard.instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("view2") as MyView2
//view2.Label2nd.text=text;
self.navigationController.pushViewController(view2, animated: true)
}
MyView2.swift
#IBOutlet var Label2nd: UILabel
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
var VC = ViewController()
var string = (VC.Text1st.text) //it doesn't like this, I get a 'Can't unwrap Option.. error'
println(string)
}
-------EDITED UPDATED CODE FROM (drewag)-------
ViewController.swift
let text = "text"
var sendString = Text1st.text
println(sendString) //successfully print it out.
let view2 = self.storyboard.instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("view2") as MyView2
view2.Label2nd.text=sendString;
self.navigationController.pushViewController(view2, animated: true)
MyView2.swift
#IBOutlet var Label2nd: UILabel
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
var VC = ViewController()
var string = self.Label2nd.text
println(string) //still getting the error of an unwrap optional.none
}

Answer 1

var VC = ViewController() creates a new instance of ViewController. Unless there is a default value, you are not going to get any value out of VC.Text1st.text. You really should use a string variable on your second view controller to pass the data to it.
Also, a note on common formatting:
Class names should start with a capital letter (as you have)
Method / function names should start with a lower case letter
UIViewController subclasses should have "Controller" included in their name, otherwise, it looks like it is a subclass of UIView which is an entirely different level of Model View Controller (the architecture of all UIKit and Cocoa frameworks)
Edit:
Here is some example code:
class ViewController1 : UIViewController {
...
func goToSecondView() {
var viewController = ViewController2()
viewController.myString = "Some String"
self.navigationController.pushViewController(viewController, animated: true)
}
}
class ViewController2 : UIViewController {
var myString : String?
func methodToUseMyString() {
if let string = self.myString {
println(string)
}
}
...
}
Note, I am not creating ViewController2 using a storyboard. I personally prefer avoiding storyboards because they don't scale well and I find editing them to be very cumbersome. You can of course change it to create the view controller out of the storyboard if you prefer.

Answer 2

jatoben is correct that you want to use optional binding. IBOutlets are automatically optionals so you should check the textfield to see if it is nil.
if let textField = VC.Text1st {
println(textField.text)
}
This should prevent your app from crashing, but it will not print out anything because your text field has not yet been initialized.
Edit:
If you want to have a reference to your initial ViewController inside your second you're going to have to change a few things. First add a property on your second viewcontroller that will be for the first view controller:
#IBOutlet var Label2nd: UILabel //existing code
var firstVC: ViewController? //new
Then after you create view2, set it's firstVC as the ViewController you are currently in:
let view2 = self.storyboard.instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("view2") as MyView2 //already in your code
view2.firstVC = self //new
Finally in your viewDidLoad in your second view controller, use firstVC instead of the ViewController you recreated. It will look something like this:
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
if let textField = firstVC?.Text2nd {
println(textField.text)
}
}

Answer 3

Use optional binding to unwrap the property:
if let string = VC.Text1st.text {
println(string)
}