How to use Namespaces in Swift?

Question

The documentation only mentions nested types, but it\'s not clear if they can be used as namespaces. I haven\'t found any explicit mentioning of namespaces.

Answer 1

You can use extension to use the mentioned structs approach for namespacing without having to indent all of your code towards the right. I've been toying with this a bit and I'm not sure I'd go as far as creating Controllers and Views namespaces like in the example below, but it does illustrate how far it can go:

Profiles.swift:

// Define the namespaces
struct Profiles {
  struct Views {}
  struct ViewControllers {}
}

Profiles/ViewControllers/Edit.swift

// Define your new class within its namespace
extension Profiles.ViewControllers {
  class Edit: UIViewController {}
}

// Extend your new class to avoid the extra whitespace on the left
extension Profiles.ViewControllers.Edit {
  override func viewDidLoad() {
    // Do some stuff
  }
}

Profiles/Views/Edit.swift

extension Profiles.Views {
  class Edit: UIView {}
}

extension Profiles.Views.Edit {
  override func drawRect(rect: CGRect) {
    // Do some stuff
  }
}

I haven't used this in an app since I haven't needed this level of separation yet but I think it's an interesting idea. This removes the need for even class suffixes such as the ubiquitous *ViewController suffix which is annoyingly long.

However, it doesn't shorten anything when it's referenced such as in method parameters like this:

class MyClass {
  func doSomethingWith(viewController: Profiles.ViewControllers.Edit) {
    // secret sauce
  }
}