“initialize” class method for classes in Swift?

Question

I\'m looking for behavior similar to Objective-C\'s +(void)initialize class method, in that the method is called once when the class is initialized, and never a

Answer 1

@aleclarson nailed it, but as of recent Swift 4 you cannot directly override initialize. You still can achieve it with Objective-C and categories for classes inheriting from NSObject with a class / static swiftyInitialize method, which gets invoked from Objective-C in MyClass.m, which you include in compile sources alongside MyClass.swift:

# MyView.swift

import Foundation
public class MyView: UIView
{
    @objc public static func swiftyInitialize() {
        Swift.print("Rock 'n' roll!")
    }
}

# MyView.m

#import "MyProject-Swift.h"
@implementation MyView (private)
    + (void)initialize { [self swiftyInitialize]; }
@end

If your class cannot inherit from NSObject and using +load instead of +initialize is a suitable fit, you can do something like this:

# MyClass.swift

import Foundation
public class MyClass
{
    public static func load() {
        Swift.print("Rock 'n' roll!")
    }
}
public class MyClassObjC: NSObject
{
    @objc public static func swiftyLoad() {
        MyClass.load()
    }
}

# MyClass.m

#import "MyProject-Swift.h"
@implementation MyClassObjC (private)
    + (void)load { [self swiftyLoad]; }
@end

There are couple of gotchas, especially when using this approach in static libraries, check out the complete post on Medium for details! ✌️