How do you unwrap Swift optionals?

Question

How do you properly unwrap both normal and implicit optionals?

There seems to be confusion in this topic and I would just like to have a reference for all of the way

Answer 1

I created an approach to unwrap optional value:

// MARK: - Modules
import Foundation
import UIKit
import CoreData

// MARK: - PROTOCOL
protocol OptionalType { init() }

// MARK: - EXTENSIONS
extension String: OptionalType {}
extension Int: OptionalType {}
extension Double: OptionalType {}
extension Bool: OptionalType {}
extension Float: OptionalType {}
extension CGFloat: OptionalType {}
extension CGRect: OptionalType {}
extension UIImage: OptionalType {}
extension IndexPath: OptionalType {}
extension Date: OptionalType {}
extension UIFont: OptionalType {}
extension UIColor: OptionalType {}
extension UIViewController: OptionalType {}
extension UIView: OptionalType {}
extension NSMutableDictionary: OptionalType {}
extension NSMutableArray: OptionalType {}
extension NSMutableSet: OptionalType {}
extension NSEntityDescription: OptionalType {}
extension Int64: OptionalType {}
extension CGPoint: OptionalType {}
extension Data: OptionalType {}
extension NSManagedObjectContext: OptionalType {}

prefix operator ?*

//unwrapping values
prefix func ?*( value: T?) -> T {
    guard let validValue = value else { return T() }
    return validValue
}

You can add your custom data type also.

Usage:-

var myString = ?*str

Hope it helps :)