July 2014 20

Generic code enables you to write flexible, reusable functions and types that can work with any type, subject to requirements that you define. You can write code that avoids duplication and expresses its intent in a clear, abstracted manner.

Generics are one of the most powerful features of Swift, and much of the Swift standard library is built with generic code. In fact, you’ve been using generics throughout this Language Guide, even if you didn’t realize it. For example, Swift’s Array and Dictionary types are both generic collections. You can create an array that holds Int values, or an array that holds String values, or indeed an array for any other type that can be created in Swift. Similarly, you can create a dictionary to store values of any specified type, and there are no limitations on what that type can be.

This video was developed by Skip Wilson. You can follow him on Twitter (@SkipAllMighty).

A protocol defines a blueprint of methods, properties, and other requirements that suit a particular task or piece of functionality. The protocol doesn’t actually provide an implementation for any of these requirements—it only describes what an implementation will look like. The protocol can then be adopted by a class, structure, or enumeration to provide an actual implementation of those requirements. Any type that satisfies the requirements of a protocol is said to conform to that protocol.

Protocols can require that conforming types have specific instance properties, instance methods, type methods, operators, and subscripts.

This video was developed by Skip Wilson. You can follow him on Twitter (@SkipAllMighty).

Classes, structures, and enumerations can define subscripts, which are shortcuts for accessing the member elements of a collection, list, or sequence. You use subscripts to set and retrieve values by index without needing separate methods for setting and retrieval. For example, you access elements in an Array instance as someArray[index] and elements in a Dictionary instance as someDictionary[key].

You can define multiple subscripts for a single type, and the appropriate subscript overload to use is selected based on the type of index value you pass to the subscript. Subscripts are not limited to a single dimension, and you can define subscripts with multiple input parameters to suit your custom type’s needs.

This video was developed by Skip Wilson. You can follow him on Twitter (@SkipAllMighty).

An enumeration defines a common type for a group of related values and enables you to work with those values in a type-safe way within your code.

If you are familiar with C, you will know that C enumerations assign related names to a set of integer values. Enumerations in Swift are much more flexible, and do not have to provide a value for each member of the enumeration. If a value (known as a “raw” value) is provided for each enumeration member, the value can be a string, a character, or a value of any integer or floating-point type.

Alternatively, enumeration members can specify associated values of any type to be stored along with each different member value, much as unions or variants do in other languages. You can define a common set of related members as part of one enumeration, each of which has a different set of values of appropriate types associated with it.

This video was developed by Skip Wilson. You can follow him on Twitter (@SkipAllMighty).

Closures are self-contained blocks of functionality that can be passed around and used in your code. Closures in Swift are similar to blocks in C and Objective-C and to lambdas in other programming languages.

Closures can capture and store references to any constants and variables from the context in which they are defined. This is known as closing over those constants and variables, hence the name “closures”. Swift handles all of the memory management of capturing for you.

This video was developed by Skip Wilson. You can follow him on Twitter (@SkipAllMighty).