Swift API Design

These are notes I’ve taken while watching the video of the corresponding session. They don’t have all the information contained in the video, but I’ve tried to still write the main points for my personal use cases.

Prefixes only for APIs from Objective-C

Use classes if you NEED the reference. Where it has identity and its identity is different from the value it’s holding (and example in Apple frameworks in a box in RealityKit).

Needs to be a concious choice.

If you copy a struct that includes a class, the class is the same. This can be really confusing to users of your API.

One solution:

struct Model { private var _reference: MyReference private var reference { get { _reference } set { _reference = MyReference(copying: newValue)} } }

But if reference is mutable you could just mutate its properties without changing the object itself.

So keep it private and instead only expose what you need:

struct Model { private var _reference: MyReference public var isEditable { get { _reference.isEditable } set { if !isKnownUniquelyReferenced(&_reference){_reference = MyReference(copying: _reference)} _reference.isEditable = newValue } } }

Or even better (to expose a more generic copy on write version):

@dynamicMemberLookup struct Model { private var _reference: MyReference public subscript(dynamicMember keyPath: ReferenceWritableKeyPath<Texture,T>)->T { get { _reference[keyPath: keyPath] } set { if !isKnownUniquelyReferenced(&_reference){_reference = MyReference(copying: _reference)} _reference[keyPath: keyPath] = newValue } } }

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Use protocols for composability. But don’t start with a protocol. Start with concrete use and later on if you need make a protocol. Consider making a generic type instead of a protocol and also consider making protocols composable.

How to declare In your struct: @DefensiveCopying public var view UIView

Some example shown are for Late Initialization and Defensive Copying, but you can use it for what you want.

In your DefensiveCopying definition @propertyWrapper public struct DefensiveCopying{ private var storage:Value public init(initialValue value:Value){ storage = value.copy as! Value } public var value:Value{ get{storage} set{storage = newValue.copy() as! Value} } }

You can also use extensions on DefensiveCopying to provide additional initializers. The compiler will generate a $view backing store.

How to use a custom initializer (optional) @DefensiveCopy(customInit: view) public var view UIView

Other examples: @UserDefault(key: “”, defaultValue: ) @ThreadSpecific @Options//for command line options

Used extensively in SwiftUI (@State,@Binding,@Environment).

Source: Modern Swift API Design