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Swift Semantics

Oct 16, 2020  ·  swift

In this post, we’ll look at various ways to improve readability of Swift code, by introducing a couple of extensions to Swift’s native types.

Background

There will always be parts of any programming language that you may think are lacking or don’t fit your personal coding style. This is also true for me with Swift & SwiftUI.

For instance, why does SwiftUI has a disabled view modifier, but not an inverted enabled one, why do you have to type if !list.isEmpty instead of if list.hasContent, etc.

Since Swift & SwiftUI has gaps that I think should be there, I have started adding reusable extensions to make my code more straightforward. I will go through some of them below.

If you have more suggestions, don’t hesitate to discuss in the comments or submit a PR.

Inverse semantics

I think using ! in control flow makes code harder to read, since it adds logic operators to code that otherwise pretty much reads like English.

In many cases, you can replace a guard with an if and vice versa to reverse the check. For instance, instead of the double negation nature of this guard:

guard !view.isHidden else { return }

I think this reads better:

if view.isHidden { return }

Sometimes you can’t do this, though. For instance, here you can’t replace if with guard, since guards have to return:

if !view.isHidden { /* do something with the view */ }

In these cases, inverse properties can help. The inverse of isHidden would be isVisible:

if view.isVisible { /* do something with the view */ }

I find that it’s easier to read code that expresses intent instead of inversed intent, so I try to reduce negations as much as possible.

Syntax hiding semantics

For an overall readable language like Swift, I think that == and != reduces readability (not always true, though).

For instance, consider if you want to check that an optional has a value:

if myOptional != nil { ... }
if myOptional == nil { ... }

I think the following is easier to read:

if myOptional.isSet { ... }
if myOptional.isNil { ... }

The same goes for comparisons. Consider comparing two dates:

if date1 > date2 { ... } 
if date1 < date2 { ... } 
if date1 == date2 { ... }

I think the following is easier to read:

if date1.isAfter(date2) { ... }
if date1.isBefore(date2) { ... }
if date1.isSame(as: date2) { ... }

However, I think the syntax above reduces readability in some cases, e.g. when comparing numeric values. I don’t think if 5.isGreater(than: 4) is more readable than if 5 > 4.

Chaining semantics

In many cases, chaining operators can improve readability by removing guard or if let when using optional values.

For instance, consider this case, where we cast an optional SwiftUI View to AnyView:

var body: some View {
    content
}

var content: AnyView {
    if let form = loginForm {
        return AnyView(form)
    } else {
        // Logged in content
    }
}

var loginForm: LoginForm? {
    isLoggedIn ? nil : LoginForm()
}

In the code above, you must perform an if let to get the login form before you can cast it. To simplify things, you could add the following extension:

public extension View {
    
    func anyView() -> AnyView {
        AnyView(self)
    }
}

then make the code more compact by not having to if let the login form:

var content: AnyView {
    loginForm?.anyView() ?? SomeLoggedInView()
}

The same can be used to simplify code for converting optional numeric values. Instead of:

var myInt: Int?
...
guard let value = myInt else { return nil }
return Double(myInt)

you can add an Int extension:

extension Int {
    
    func toDouble() -> Double { Double(self) }
}

that lets you chain the code and make it more readable:

return myInt?.toDouble()

I think chaining is as great here as when e.g. chaining maps, reduce, filters, modifiers, etc.

Conclusion

This article discusses things I think improves the readability of Swift code. One could argue that you just have to become familiar with the syntax, but I’d argue against that.

Below is a list of semantics that I use in my projects:

  • Collection hasContent instead of !isEmpty
  • Date isAfter, isBefore and isSame instead of >/, < and ==
  • Decimal doubleValue instead of Double(truncating...)
  • Numeric toX() e.g. Int toDouble() instead of Double(self)
  • Optional isNil instead of == nil
  • Optional isSet instead of != nil
  • String hasContent instead of !isEmpty
  • View any instead of AnyView(self)
  • View hidden(if:) instead of if x { view.hidden() } else { view }
  • View visible(if:) instead of if !view.hidden(if:)

Source Code

I have added most of the extensions in this post to SwiftUIKit. Feel free to try it out and let me know what you think.

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