Implementation of Reflection in Swift
Intro
Reflection is a set of functions that allows a program to inspect and modify its own structure or even how it works at runtime. I’ll start with a real life use case.
Recently I’ve found an excellent library EVReflection, which does a similar job as LFModel does: parsing a dictionary to and from a native Swift class. Please take a look at the code below:
import LFramework
import EVReflection
class UserModel: LFModel {
var name: String?
var friends: [UserModel] = []
var father: UserModel!
// the commented code will be explained later
/*
required init(dict: LTDictStrObj?) {
super.init(dict: dict)
reload("father", type: NSStringFromClass(UserModel))
reload("friends", type: NSStringFromClass(UserModel))
}
*/
}
class UserObject: EVObject {
var id: Int = 0
var name: String = ""
var friends: [UserObject]? = []
}
...
let model = UserModel(dict: [
"id": 42,
"name": "Leah Cain",
"friends": [["id": 43, "name": "Leo"]],
"father": ["id": 44, "name": "Deckard Cain"]
])
LF.log("model", model)
let json:String = "{\"id\": 24, \"name\": \"Bob Jefferson\", \"friends\": [{\"id\": 29, \"name\": \"Jen Jackson\"}]}"
let user = UserObject(json: json)
print("user: \(user)")The output is going to be like this:
model: 'LFramework_Example.UserModel (0x7f96c1427810): [
father: '{
friends = (
);
id = 44;
name = "Deckard Cain";
}'
friends: [
{
friends = (
);
id = 43;
name = Leo;
}
]
id: 42
name: 'Leah Cain'
]'
user: UserObject {
hash = 2985078112003787767
key = id, value = 24
key = name, value = Bob Jefferson
key = friends, value = (
{
friends = (
);
id = 29;
name = "Jen Jackson";
}
)
}Although reflection is relatively slow, the advantage is obvious: you can write highly dynamic code that minimizes interface and still achieves functionalities that’s desired. For example, with EVRefection or LFModel, you don’t have to tell what properties there would be in the data model while parsing. The library loops through all the keys/values and processes different data types itself.
In this post, I’ll be focusing on the implementation of reflection in Swift, and hopefully it will help you get a better understanding of the dynamic feature of Swift, so that it can be used in your own framework.
Implementation
Creating a native object based on a Dictionary
To create a native object from a given Dictionary (or a JSON object that can be deserialized to native Dictionary), we can use for (key, value) in dict to loop through it, and assign the keys/values to an object using setValue(value, forKey:key). However, assigning a value to a non-existent key will cause an error, thus we need to check if the object respondsToSelector first.
But here’s something funny happening. Please try to guess what will happen and run the following code in a Playground.
import Foundation
class TestObject: NSObject {
var int0: Int = 0
var int1: Int?
var int2: Int!
var int3: NSNumber?
var str: String?
func selectorTest() {
print("responds to int0: \(respondsToSelector(NSSelectorFromString("int0")))")
print("responds to int1: \(respondsToSelector(NSSelectorFromString("int1")))")
print("responds to int2: \(respondsToSelector(NSSelectorFromString("int2")))")
print("responds to int3: \(respondsToSelector(NSSelectorFromString("int3")))")
print("responds to str: \(respondsToSelector(NSSelectorFromString("str")))")
setValue(42, forKey:"int3")
}
}
let test = TestObject()
test.selectorTest()
print("int3: \(test.int3)")Although in Swift Int can be bridged to NSNumber, TestObject does not respond to int1 and int2, and setValue(42, forKey:("int1")) will result an error. So it shows that an NSObject responds to:
Intwith a default valueNSNumber?, a subclass ofNSObjectString?, a nativeSwiftdata type.
Since TestObject is an NSObject, all the method calls are identical in Objective-C. However, to do things the other way around, some Swift only mechanism will be introduced.
Getting all properties from a native object
In Objective-C, to get all properties from a NSObject, we can use Objective-C runtime APIs class_copyPropertyList to get the property list, and then use property_getName to get the names of all the items.
import Foundation
class ChildObject: NSObject {
var int10: Int = 0
var int11: Int?
var str10: String = "test"
var str11: String?
func keys() -> [String] {
var array = [String]()
var count: CUnsignedInt = 0
let properties: UnsafeMutablePointer<objc_property_t> = class_copyPropertyList(object_getClass(self), &count)
for i in 0 ..< Int(count) {
if let key = NSString(CString: property_getName(properties[i]), encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding) as? String {
array.append(key)
}
}
return array
}
}
let child = ChildObject()
print("keys: \(child.keys())")You’ll see keys: ["int10", "str10", "str11"] as the results in Playground. Yes, int11 is still missing, so with this approach you’ll always need to give types like Int a default value.
Furthermore, if we inherit from TestObject but not NSObject, i.e. class ChildObject: TestObject, we’re going to see the same result. In real life it’s very common to create things like a StudentObject based on a UserObject, and we do need to know student1.name, in which name is a property of UserObject if I’m allowed to be Captain Obvious here. Anyway, to support things like this, we need to do some little tweaks:
...
class ChildObject: TestObject {
var int10: Int = 0
var int11: Int?
var str10: String = "test"
var str11: String?
func keys() -> [String] {
var array = [String]()
var c: AnyClass! = object_getClass(self)
loop: while c != nil {
print("class: \(NSStringFromClass(c))")
if NSStringFromClass(c) == "NSObject" {
break
}
var count: CUnsignedInt = 0
let properties: UnsafeMutablePointer<objc_property_t> = class_copyPropertyList(c, &count)
for i in 0 ..< Int(count) {
if let key = NSString(CString: property_getName(properties[i]), encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding) {
array.append(key as String)
}
}
c = class_getSuperclass(c)
}
return array
}
}
let child = ChildObject()
print("keys: \(child.keys())")And now we’re getting keys: ["int10", "str10", "str11", "int0", "int3", "str"] - guess we are used to the absence of int1, int2, and int11 already. Basically what we did this time was trying to loop through the object and its superclasses to get all the properties of each other, until the superclass is NSObject.
Mirror in Swift 2
If you’re not quite comfortable with the code above since it’s too objc, it’s perfectly fine: actually Swift has its own reflection mechanism, and it’s significantly changed since Swift 2. Mirror() replaced reflect() and represents the structure of a native object. Try to add the code below after the definition of ChildObject and its instance child:
var mirror: Mirror? = Mirror(reflecting: child)
repeat {
for property in mirror!.children {
print("property: \(property)")
}
mirror = mirror?.superclassMirror()
} while mirror != nilAnd what do we get this time?
property: (Optional("int10"), 0)
property: (Optional("int11"), nil)
property: (Optional("str10"), "test")
property: (Optional("str11"), nil)
property: (Optional("int0"), 0)
property: (Optional("int1"), nil)
property: (Optional("int2"), nil)
property: (Optional("int3"), nil)
property: (Optional("str"), nil)Yay! Not only the code is much simpler, we also have all the Int families back in. You can read more about Mirror in The Swift Reflection API and what you can do with it, but from the code above we already get what we want: getting all properties from a native object.
Getting the class of a property from its name
You may notice the commented init in UserModel. It can be interpret to “after everything is initialized, find the key father or friends, and reload it as either a UserModel or an array of UserModel, based on the type of father or friends”. Without this line friends will be set as the original Array, which looks like [["id": 43, "name": "Leo"]]. So suppose the function reload is already there, how to implement the init so the reloads happen automatically?
Firstly let’s see what we need. In reload, NSClassFromString is used to get the class of the object from a string.
let a_class = NSClassFromString(type) as! LFModel.Type
let obj = a_class.init(dict: dict_parameter)
setValue(obj, forKey:key)If you inspect type, which in our case is NSStringFromClass(UserModel), it’s something like LFramework_Example.UserModel, as we can see a Swift class is like “bundle name + class name”. So we can loop through child in Mirror(reflecting:self).type.children and find the child where child.label is equal to either father or friends. Each child.value.dynamicType is going to be:
father:Optional<UserModel>friends:Array<UserModel>
So if we get rid of the Optional<> and Array<> part, and append it after bundle name bundle.infoDictionary[kCFBundleNameKey], we’ll be able to use the class name string to do the reload. After the following code is added inside init of LFModel, we don’t need to call the reload manually.
if value is [String: AnyObject] || value is [AnyObject] {
let type: Mirror = Mirror(reflecting:self)
for child in type.children {
if let label = child.label where label == key
{
var type = String(child.value.dynamicType)
type = type.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("Optional<", withString: "", options: NSStringCompareOptions.LiteralSearch, range: nil)
type = type.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("Array<", withString: "", options: NSStringCompareOptions.LiteralSearch, range: nil)
type = type.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString(">", withString: "", options: NSStringCompareOptions.LiteralSearch, range: nil)
let bundle = NSBundle(forClass: self.dynamicType)
if let name = bundle.infoDictionary?[kCFBundleNameKey as String] as? String {
type = name + "." + type
}
setValue(value, forKey:key)
reload(key, type: type)
break
}
}
} else {
setValue(value, forKey:key)
}However, the code above is just a proof of concept to show how to get the class of a property from its name. We don’t have to do it if we pass the class instead of the class name to reload, and not to mention it highly relies on the implementation of how NSStringFromClass works in Swift, which might be changed in future. I would highly recommend to use the better maintained EVObject instead of my LFModel, which is used in this tutorial just because its implementation is much simpler to understand.
Conclusion
In this post, we’ve discussed the tricks of assigning keys/values to a native object and the other way around, i.e. getting properties from a native object in both the old Objective-C runtime way and the new Swift 2 Mirror way, as well as getting the class of a property from its name. In the beginning these tricks are used to convert a Dictionary into an object.
The downside of reflection is always about performance, and it makes it harder to perform static analytics, so it’s more often used in libraries and not the actual business logic, expect you’re 100% sure what you’re doing, which might not be right if you take a look at the code 1 year later. And particularly in Swift, it’s a relatively new and fast evolving language, and the new version is not always going to be backward compatible. For example, as we mentioned in Swift 2 Mirror() replaced reflect(), and there’s no guarantee that NSStringFromClass is always going to work in the same way.
Despite of all the disadvantages, using reflection carefully results highly dynamic code, simplifies interface, and allows you to think out of the box.
All the code above can be found in the refactor/framework branch of LSwift.
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