How to declare a 'protected' variable in swift

Question

I want to create a class that inherits from another class, which is in a different file.

For example:

Class1.swift

class Class1
{
    protected var 
    //Do Stuff
}

Class2.swift

class Class2:Class1
{
    //Do stuff
}

How would I be able to have access to a 'protected' variable/function in swift?

When I declare a private variable/function, I can only use it in that class. If I use 'fileprivate', my other class HAS to be in the same file as Class1. What I want to do is keep my classes in separate files and use the Groups from within Xcode to know what class belongs with which category.

Answer 1

You would have to use internal for that as Swift doesn't offer a protected keyword (unlike many other programming languages). internal is the only access modifier between fileprivate and public:

Internal access enables entities to be used within any source file from their defining module, but not in any source file outside of that module. You typically use internal access when defining an app’s or a framework’s internal structure.

There is a blog post that explains a little bit more about why the language designers chose not to offer a protected keyword (or anything equivalent).

Some of the reasons being that

It doesn’t actually offer any real protection, since a subclass can always expose “protected” API through a new public method or property.

and also the fact that protected would cause problems when it comes to extensions, as it wouldn't be clear whether extensions should also have access to protected properties or not.

Answer 2

Even if Swift doesn't provide protected access, still we can achieve similar access by using fileprivate access control.
Only thing we need to keep in mind that we need to declare all the children in same file as parent declared in.

Animal.swift

import Foundation

class Animal {
    fileprivate var protectedVar: Int = 0
}

class Dog: Animal {
    func doSomething() {
        protectedVar = 1
    }
}

OtherFile.swift

let dog = Dog()
dog.doSomething()

Answer 3

Use an underscore for such protected variables :/

That's about it ...

class RawDisplayThing {
    
    var _fraction: CGFloat = 0 {
        didSet { ... }
    }


class FlightMap: RawDisplayThing() {

    var currentPosition() {
        ...
        _fraction = 
        ...
    }
}

Everyone has to "just agree" that only the concept class can use the "_" variables and functions.

At least, it's then relatively easy to search globally on each "_" item and ensure it only used by the superclasses.

Alternately, prepend say "local", "display", or possibly the name of the class (or whatever makes sense to your team) to such concepts.

class RawDisplayThing {
    
    var rawDisplayFraction: ...
    var rawDisplayTrigger: ...
    var rawDisplayConvolution: ...

etc etc. Maybe it helps :/

Answer 4

If you dont want to have both classes belonging to the same file, here is what you can do:

class Parent {
    internal private(set) var myProtectedBoolean = false
}

Then on the child class:

class Child: Parent {
   private var _myProtectedBoolean: Bool = false;

   override var myProtectedBoolean: Bool {
       get { return _myProtectedBoolean }
       set { _myProtectedBoolean = newValue }
   }
}

Answer 5

The next best thing in my opinion would be to have both classes in the same file and use fileprivate instead.

class Class1 {
   fileprivate var foo: String
}

final class Class2: Class1 {
   func bar() {
      // Class1.foo is accessible from Class1 but nothing else
      self.foo = "bar" 
   }
}