Entity Classes in Swift

We must admit that most of use MVC pattern when it comes to business kinda apps or any type of apps at all. And before developing on Ios i used entity classes with C#, Java, Python you name it, and i want to write an example of them in Swift let’s begin.

Define a new Swift file

I generally store my entity classes in a different folder like, Model or Entities. Right click in your project navigator, select New File and name your classand press Return key:

import Foundation

You will get this empty swift file, we shall define our class ourselves :

...

class BaseEntity {

    init() {

    }
}

As you can see there is not much difference to other languages, similar like C# or Java or maybe JavaScript, syntax is pretty cool i guess.

Add properties to your class

Who does not need properties? Let’s add some :

.... 

    var id : Int
    var name : String

    init(_ id : Int, _ name : String) {
        self.id = id
        self.name = name
    }
....

Yep, we defined 2 variables, which’ve become the class properties now, and we added 2 parameters to our init() function, we had to do that if we did not, it would throw an error.

What if you don’t want to define arguments to your init function?

Well that is possible, too. You just need to make your variables nullable (aka: nil) :

...
var id : Int?
var name : String?

init() {

}
...

This implementation will not throw an error.

Conclusion

This entity class thing almost became a coding standart, wherever you go, you gotta write these in order to keep your code tidy and also they are useful when you work with a database.