Constrain Swift extensions with protocols

Mar 28, 2019 · Follow on Twitter and Mastodon swiftprotocolsextensions

I love Swift’s type system and its extension model, but you have to use it with care. In this short post, I discuss how to keep your extensions from being exposed everywhere.

A common use for Swift extensions is to extend foundation classes with additional functionality. For instance, adding this extension to your app would add a new center property to all CGRect values:

extension CGRect {
    
    var center: CGPoint {
        return CGPoint(x: midX, y: midY)
    }
}

This is a valid extension, since it fits CGRect model. All rects could have this property without it feeling strange or being invalid in certain contexts.

Sometimes, extensions are even so correct and often implemented, that they make their way into the standard library. One example is random(...), which was added to the standard library in Swift 4.2.

Sometimes, however, extensions are not suitable for all instances of the class they extend, nor in all contexts. For instance, consider this UIView extension:

extension UIView {
    
    private var key: String { return "shake" }
    
    func startShaking() {
        wobble(Int.max)
    }
    
    func stopShaking() {
        layer.removeAnimation(forKey: key)
    }
    
    func shake(_ numberOfTimes: Int) {
        let animation = CABasicAnimation(keyPath: "transform.rotation")
        animation.toValue = -Double.pi/128
        animation.fromValue = Double.pi/128
        animation.duration = 0.2
        animation.repeatCount = Float(numberOfTimes)
        animation.autoreverses = true
        layer.add(animation, forKey: key)
    }
}

Adding this extension to your app would make it possible to add a shake effect to all views in your app.

While this is perfectly valid, it’s not a good idea. Not only does it make it possible to shake views that should not be shaken, but startShaking(), stopShaking() and shake(_ numberOfTimes: Int) would also bloat intellisense for all views. This means that adding many extensions to general classes will bloat your types with functionality that may be invalid in many contexts.

To avoid this problem, you should restrict the scope of your extensions to ensure that they can only be used intentionally. One way to do this is to create protocols to which you constrain the extensions.

For instance, by adding a Shakeable protocol, we can constrain the functionality to only apply to views that implement this protocol:

protocol Shakeable {}

extension Shakeable where Self: UIView {
    
    private var key: String { return "shake" }
    
    func startShaking() {
        shake(Int.max)
    }
    
    func stopShaking() {
        layer.removeAnimation(forKey: key)
    }
    
    func shake(_ numberOfTimes: Int) {
        let animation = CABasicAnimation(keyPath: "transform.rotation")
        animation.toValue = -Double.pi/128
        animation.fromValue = Double.pi/128
        animation.duration = 0.2
        animation.repeatCount = Float(numberOfTimes)
        animation.autoreverses = true
        layer.add(animation, forKey: key)
    }
}

This approach gives you total control over where extension can be used. This will make your code cleaner and more intentional.

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