What's new in Swift 4.1

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What's new in Swift 4.1 관련

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What's new in Swift 4.1 – Hacking with Swift

Synthesized equatable, conditional conformance, and more!

Swift 4.1 is the first minor release of Swift 4, bringing with it some useful improvements such as automatically synthesized equatable and hashable, conditional conformances, a smarter way to detect the simulator environment, and more.

Make sure you have Xcode 9.3 or later then create a new playground. Let’s take a look at the top new features for this release…

Update

I created an Xcode Playground showing what's new in Swift 4.1 with examples you can edit.

Synthesized Equatable and Hashable

The Equatable protocol allows Swift to compare one instance of a type against another. When we say 5 == 5, Swift understands what that means because Int conforms to Equatable, which means it implements a function describing what == means for two instances of Int.

Implementing Equatable in our own value types allows them to work like Swift’s strings, arrays, numbers, and more, and it’s usually a good idea to make your structs conform to Equatable just so they fit the concept of value types better.

However, implementing Equatable by hand can be annoying. Consider this code:

struct Person {
    var firstName: String
    var lastName: String
    var age: Int
    var city: String
}

If you have two instances of Person and want to make sure they are identical, you need to compare all four of its properties, like this:

struct Person: Equatable {
    var firstName: String
    var lastName: String
    var age: Int
    var city: String

    static func ==(lhs: Person, rhs: Person) -> Bool {
        return lhs.firstName == rhs.firstName && lhs.lastName == rhs.lastName && lhs.age == rhs.age && lhs.city == rhs.city
    }
}

Even reading that is tiring, never mind writing it.

Fortunately, Swift 4.1 can synthesize conformance for Equatable for us – it can generate an == method automatically, which will compare all properties in one value with all properties in another, just like above. So, all you have to do now is add Equatable as a protocol for your type, and Swift will do the rest:

struct Person: Equatable {
    var firstName: String
    var lastName: String
    var age: Int
    var city: String
}

Of course, if you want you can implement == yourself. For example, if your type has an id field that identifies it uniquely, you would write == to compare that single value rather than letting Swift do all the extra work.

Swift 4.1 also introduces synthesized support for the Hashable protocol, which means it will generate a hashValue property for conforming types automatically. Hashable was always annoying to implement because you need to return a unique (or at least mostly unique) hash for every object. It’s important, though, because it lets you use your objects as dictionary keys and store them in sets.

Previously we’d need to write code like this:

var hashValue: Int {
    return firstName.hashValue ^ lastName.hashValue &* 16777619
}

For the most part that’s no longer needed in Swift 4.1, although as with Equatable you might still want to write your own method if there’s something specific you need.

Note

You still need to opt in to these protocols by adding a conformance to your type, and using the synthesized code does require that all properties in your type conform to Equatable or Hashable respectively.

For more information, see Swift Evolution proposal SE-0185 (apple/swift-evolution).

Key decoding strategy for `Codable`

I wrote a full article on this useful new feature: Swift 4.1 improves Codable with keyDecodingStrategy

In Swift 4.0 a common problem was trying to use Codable with JSON that utilized snake_case for its key names rather than the camelCase we normally use in Swift. Codable was unable to understand how the two different name types were mapped, so you had to create a custom CodingKeys enum helping it out.

This is where Swift 4.1's new keyDecodingStrategy property comes in: it’s set to .useDefaultKeys by default, which does a direct mapping of JSON names to Swift properties. However, if you change it to .convertFromSnakeCase then Codable handles the name conversion for us.

For example:

let decoder = JSONDecoder()
decoder.keyDecodingStrategy = .convertFromSnakeCase

do {
    let macs = try decoder.decode([Mac].self, from: jsonData)
    print(macs)
} catch {
    print(error.localizedDescription)
}

When you want to go back the other way – to convert a Codable struct with camelCase properties back to JSON with snake_case keys, set the keyEncodingStrategy to .convertToSnakeCase like this:

let encoder = JSONEncoder()
encoder.keyEncodingStrategy = .convertToSnakeCase
let encoded = try encoder.encode(someObject)

Conditional conformances

Swift 4.1 implements SE-0143 (apple/swift-evolution), which introduced proposed conditional conformances into the language. This allows types to conform to a protocol only when certain conditions are met.

To demonstrate conditional conformances, let's create a Purchaseable protocol that we can use to buy things:

protocol Purchaseable {
   func buy()
}

We can now define a Book struct that conforms to the protocol, and prints a message when a book is bought:

struct Book: Purchaseable {
   func buy() {
      print("You bought a book")
   }
}

So far this is easy enough, but let's take it one step further: what if the user has a basket full of books, and wants to buy them all? We could loop over all books in the array by hand, calling buy() on each one. But a better approach is to write an extension on Array to make it conform to Purchaseable, then give it a buy() method that in turn calls buy() on each of its elements.

This is where conditional conformances come in: if we tried to extend all arrays, we'd be adding functionality where it wouldn't make sense – we'd be adding buy() to arrays of strings, for example, even though those strings don't have a buy() method we can call.

Swift 4.1 lets us make arrays conform to Purchaseable only if their elements also conform to Purchaseable, like this:

extension Array: Purchaseable where Element: Purchaseable {
   func buy() {
      for item in self {
         item.buy()
      }
   }
}

As you can see, conditional conformances let us constrain the way our extensions are applied more precisely than was possible before.

Conditional conformances also make large parts of Swift code easier and safer, even if you don't do any extra work yourself. For example, this code creates two arrays of optional strings and checks whether they are equal:

var left: [String?] = ["Andrew", "Lizzie", "Sophie"]
var right: [String?] = ["Charlotte", "Paul", "John"]
left == right

That might seem trivial, but that code wouldn't even compile in Swift 4.0 – both String and [String] were equatable, but [String?] was not.

The introduction of conditional conformance in Swift 4.1 means that it’s now possible to add protocol conformance to a type as long as it satisfies a condition. In this case, if the elements of the array are equatable, that means the whole thing is equatable. So, the above code now compiles in Swift 4.1

Conditional conformance has been extended to the Codable protocol in a way that will definitely make things safer. For example:

import Foundation

struct Person {
   var name = "Taylor"
}

var people = [Person()]
var encoder = JSONEncoder()
// try encoder.encode(people)

If you uncomment the encoder.encode(people) line, Swift will refuse to build your code because you're trying to encode a struct that doesn't conform to Codable. However, that code compiled cleanly with Swift 4.0, then threw a fatal error at runtime because Person doesn’t conform to Codable.

Obviously no one wants a fatal error at runtime, because it means your app crashes. Fortunately, Swift 4.1 cleans this up using conditional conformances: Optional, Array, Dictionary, and Set now only conform to Codable if their contents also conform to Codable, so the above code will refuse to compile.

Recursive constraints on associated types

Swift 4.1 implements SE-0157 (apple/swift-evolution), which lifts restrictions on the way we use associated types inside protocols. As a result, we can now create recursive constraints for our associated types: associated types that are constrained by the protocol they are defined in.

To demonstrate this, let's consider a simple team hierarchy in a tech company. In this company, every employee has a manager – someone more senior to them that they report to. Each manager must also be an employee of the company, because it would be weird if they weren't.

We can express this relationship in a simple Employee protocol:

protocol Employee {
   associatedtype Manager: Employee
   var manager: Manager? { get set }
}

Note

I've used an optional Manager? because ultimately one person (presumably the CEO) has no manager.

Even though that's a fairly self-evident relationship, it wasn't possible to compile that code in Swift 4.0 because we're using the Employee protocol inside itself. However, this is fixed in Swift 4.1 because of the new ability to use recursive constraints on associated types.

Thanks to this new feature, we can model a simple tech company that has three kinds of team members: junior developers, senior developers, and board members. The reporting structure is also simple: junior developers are managed by senior developers, senior developers are managed by board members, and board members may be managed by another board member – e.g. the CTO reporting to the CEO.

That looks exactly as you would imagine thanks to Swift 4.1:

class BoardMember: Employee {
   var manager: BoardMember?
}

class SeniorDeveloper: Employee {
   var manager: BoardMember?
}

class JuniorDeveloper: Employee {
   var manager: SeniorDeveloper?
}

Note

I've used classes here rather than structs because BoardMember itself contains a BoardMember property and that would result in an infinitely sized struct. If one of these has to be a class I personally would prefer to make all three classes just for consistency, but if you preferred you could leave BoardMember as a class and make both SeniorDeveloper and JuniorDeveloper into structs.

Build configuration import testing

Swift 4.1 implements SE-0075 (apple/swift-evolution), which introduces a new canImport condition that lets us check whether a specific module can be imported when our code is compiled.

This is particularly important for cross-platform code: if you had a Swift file that implemented one behavior on macOS and another on iOS, or if you needed specific functionality for Linux. For example:

#if canImport(SpriteKit)
   // this will be true for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS
#else
   // this will be true for other platforms, such as Linux
#endif

Previously you would have had to use inclusive or exclusive tests by operating system, like this:

#if !os(Linux)
   // Matches macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and any other future platforms
#endif

#if os(macOS) || os(iOS) || os(tvOS) || os(watchOS)
   // Matches only Apple platforms, but needs to be kept up to date as new platforms are added
#endif

The new canImport condition lets us focus on the functionality we care about rather than what platform we're compiling for, thus avoiding a variety of problems.

Target environment testing

Swift 4.1 implements SE-0190 (apple/swift-evolution), which introduces a new targetEnvironment condition that lets us differentiate between builds that are for physical devices and those that are for a simulated environment.

At this time targetEnvironment has only one value, simulator, which will be true if your build is targeting a simulated device such as the iOS Simulator. For example:

#if targetEnvironment(simulator)
   // code for the simulator here
#else
   // code for real devices here
#endif

This is useful when writing code to deal with functionality the simulator doesn't support, such as capturing photos from a camera or reading the accelerometer.

As an example, let's look at processing a photo from the camera. If we're running on a real device we'll create and configure a UIImagePickerController() to take photos using the camera, but if we're in the simulator we'll just load a sample image from our app bundle:

import UIKit

class TestViewController: UIViewController, UIImagePickerControllerDelegate {
   // a method that does some sort of image processing
   func processPhoto(_ img: UIImage) {
       // process photo here
   }

   // a method that loads a photo either using the camera or using a sample
   func takePhoto() {
      #if targetEnvironment(simulator)
         // we're building for the simulator; use the sample photo
         if let img = UIImage(named: "sample") {
            processPhoto(img)
         } else {
            fatalError("Sample image failed to load")
         }
      #else
         // we're building for a real device; take an actual photo
         let picker = UIImagePickerController()
         picker.sourceType = .camera
         vc.allowsEditing = true
         picker.delegate = self
         present(picker, animated: true)
      #endif
   }

   // this is called if the photo was taken successfully
   func imagePickerController(_ picker: UIImagePickerController, didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo info: [String : Any]) {
      // hide the camera
      picker.dismiss(animated: true)

      // attempt to retrieve the photo they took
      guard let image = info[UIImagePickerControllerEditedImage] as? UIImage else {
         // that failed; bail out
         return
      }

      // we have an image, so we can process it
      processPhoto(image)
   }
}

flatMap is now (partly) compactMap

The flatMap() method was useful for a variety of things in Swift 4.0, but one was particularly useful: the ability to transform each object in a collection, then remove any items that were nil.

Swift Evolution proposal SE-0187 (apple/swift-evolution) suggested changing this, and as of Swift 4.1 this flatMap() variant has been renamed to compactMap() to make its meaning clearer.

For example:

let array = ["1", "2", "Fish"]
let numbers = array.compactMap { Int($0) }

That will create an Int array containing the numbers 1 and 2, because "Fish" will fail conversion to Int, return nil, and be ignored.

Looking forward to Swift 5.0

The introduction of conditional conformance has enabled the Swift team to take out a fair amount of code while also promoting stability, and automatic Equatable and Hashable support will definitely make our lives easier.

Swift 4.2 introduces a variety of further enhancements, including derived collections of enum cases, warning and error diagnostic directives, and dynamic member look up – click here to learn what's new in Swift 4.2.

There are still other big proposals on the way, including SE-0192: Non-Exhaustive Enums (apple/swift-evolution). But as important as those features are, this is the year Apple will, we hope, deliver ABI stability for Swift, and that’s going to be huge. Fingers crossed!