Calling a Swift class factory method with leading dot notation?

Question

In a recent question, the poster had this interesting line of code:

self.view.backgroundColor = .whiteColor()

I was surprised to see this.

Answer 1

I could not find anything along the lines in the documentation. However, the way it works, I believe, is that Swift knows which type is being in context from self.view.backgroundColor, therefore expression starting directly with a dot should be a static on that type (either a static method or static property).

The following works nicely:

struct Foo {
    static func fooMethod() -> Foo {
        return Foo()
    }

    static var fooProperty: Foo = Foo()
}

var foo: Foo

foo = .fooMethod()

foo = .fooProperty