How to create a property wrapper in Swift
Property wrapper is a Swift language feature. The main goal here is wrapping properties with a logic that we extract into a separate type to reuse it across the codebase. This week, we will learn how to create a property wrapper to read data in Keychain and be a good citizen in the SwiftUI world by reacting to data changes.
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Basics
SwiftUI provides us SceneStorage and AppStorage property wrappers to access data in scene memory and user defaults, respectively. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give us a similar property wrapper to access Keychain, but we can build it. Let me show you a code example that defines the usage of the property wrapper we try to make.
final class SettingsStore: ObservableObject {
@SecureStorage(key: Constants.Keychain.useSleepMode)
var useSleepMode = true
}
As you can see in the example above, we use the SecureStorage property wrapper that needs a key to read data from Keychain. We also provide a default value that we can override over time. And now, we can move to the implementation details of the SecureStorage property wrapper.
To learn more about property wrappers in SwiftUI, take a look at my dedicated “Understanding Property Wrappers in SwiftUI” post.
To create a property wrapper, we have to create a new type annotated with the @propertyWrapper attribute. A property wrapper type must contain a field named wrappedValue. Wrapped value is the heart of any property wrapper. Swift will transparently access the wrapped value whenever you read or write to any property that uses a property wrapper.
import KeychainAccess
import Foundation
@propertyWrapper struct SecureStorage<Value: Codable> {
private let key: String
private let initialValue: Value
private let decoder = JSONDecoder()
private let encoder = JSONEncoder()
private let keychain = Keychain(
service: Constants.sharedGroup,
accessGroup: Constants.sharedGroup
)
.synchronizable(true)
.accessibility(.always)
init(wrappedValue initialValue: Value, key: String) {
self.key = key
self.initialValue = initialValue
}
}
We declare the SecureStorage property wrapper with generic constraint to decode/encode the value while writing and reading from the Keychain service. We also define an initializer that takes a key and an initial value. Swift automatically calls this initializer when you define a field with a property wrapper and a default value.
Now, we can implement the calculatable property called wrappedValue to provide access to the Keychain service.
@propertyWrapper struct SecureStorage<Value: Codable> {
// ....
var wrappedValue: Value {
get {
guard
let data = try? keychain.getData(key),
let value = try? decoder.decode(Value.self, from: data)
else {
return initialValue
}
return value
}
set {
guard let data = try? encoder.encode(newValue) else {
return
}
try? keychain.set(data, key: key)
}
}
}
Here we hide all the implementation details of using Keychain service inside the property wrapper type. We also use the third-party KeychainAccess package to utilize its nice API.
Another great thing about property wrappers is that you can use them to hide third-party code. You can easily update the SecureStorage type whenever you want to change the implementation or migrate to another Swift Package for Keychain. And this is going to be the only place for changes because the whole codebase uses the SecureStorage property wrapper and doesn’t know about implementation details.
SwiftUI support
We used to obtain bindings from property wrappers that SwiftUI provides us by using the $ sign. We can achieve the same behavior in our custom property wrappers by implementing the projectedValue property on the property wrapper type.
@propertyWrapper struct SecureStorage<Value: Codable> {
// ....
var projectedValue: Binding<Value> {
.init(
get: { wrappedValue },
set: { wrappedValue = $0 }
)
}
}
To learn more about bindings in SwiftUI, take a look at my dedicated “Binding in SwiftUI” post.
Here we create a calculated property that returns the binding to the value controlled by the property wrapper type. Now we can easily provide that binding to any SwiftUI view. Keep in mind that you can make projectedValue of any type you need, not only Binding.
Another thing that we expect from SwiftUI is that it updates the view as soon as data hidden by a property wrapper changes. To achieve that, we should do two things:
- Conform our property wrapper type to the DynamicProperty protocol that SwiftUI gives us. DynamicProperty protocol has only one requirement with a default implementation.
- Use some of SwiftUI provided property wrappers like @State, @StateObject, etc., inside our custom property wrapper type to react to data changes.
private final class KeychainStorage<Value: Codable>: ObservableObject {
var value: Value {
set {
objectWillChange.send()
save(newValue)
}
get { fetch() }
}
let objectWillChange = PassthroughSubject<Void, Never>()
private let key: String
private let defaultValue: Value
private let decoder = JSONDecoder()
private let encoder = JSONEncoder()
private let keychain = Keychain(
service: Settings.appGroup,
accessGroup: Settings.appGroup
)
.synchronizable(true)
.accessibility(.always)
init(defaultValue: Value, for key: String) {
self.defaultValue = defaultValue
self.key = key
}
private func save(_ newValue: Value) {
guard let data = try? encoder.encode(newValue) else {
return
}
try? keychain.set(data, key: key)
}
private func fetch() -> Value {
guard
let data = try? keychain.getData(key),
let freshValue = try? decoder.decode(Value.self, from: data)
else {
return defaultValue
}
return freshValue
}
}
In the current implementation, I’ve created a private class that holds all the logic of data read/write and conforms to ObservableObject protocol to use with the StateObject property wrapper. Finally, SwiftUI will update the corresponded views as soon as the data under the SecureStorage property wrapper changes.
@propertyWrapper struct SecureStorage<Value: Codable>: DynamicProperty {
@ObservedObject private var storage: KeychainStorage<Value>
var wrappedValue: Value {
get { storage.value }
nonmutating set {
storage.value = newValue
}
}
init(wrappedValue: Value, _ key: String) {
self.storage = KeychainStorage(defaultValue: wrappedValue, for: key)
}
var projectedValue: Binding<Value> {
.init(
get: { wrappedValue },
set: { wrappedValue = $0 }
)
}
}
struct HeartPointsSettings: View {
@SecureStorage(Settings.heartPoinstWeeklyGoal)
var goal: Int = 150
var body: some View {
Section(header: Text("heartMinutesGoal")) {
Stepper(value: $goal, in: 150...900, step: 10) {
Text("\(goal) heartMinutesGoalValue")
}
}
}
}
Conclusion
Property wrapper is a great way to extract reusable logic into a separate type and use it across the codebase. It also has an advantage while hiding the third-party dependencies by providing a nice API to the client-side code. I hope you enjoy the post. Feel free to follow me on Twitter and ask your questions related to this post. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!