Check string for nil & empty

Question

Is there a way to check strings for nil and \"\" in Swift? In Rails, I can use blank() to check.

I currently have this, but i

Answer 1

I know there are a lot of answers to this question, but none of them seems to be as convenient as this (in my opinion) to validate UITextField data, which is one of the most common cases for using it:

extension Optional where Wrapped == String {
    var isNilOrEmpty: Bool {
        return self?.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespaces).isEmpty ?? true
    }
}

You can just use

textField.text.isNilOrEmpty

You can also skip the .trimmingCharacters(in:.whitespaces) if you don't consider whitespaces as an empty string or use it for more complex input tests like

var isValidInput: Bool {
    return !isNilOrEmpty && self!.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespaces).characters.count >= MIN_CHARS
}