SwiftUsing brings to Swift the using feature from Jai, Jonathan Blow's programming language. It uses SwiftSyntax to code generate the required code.

To learn more about SwiftUsing development you can check out the blog post Implementing using in Swift with SwiftSyntax.

What is using

using helps with Struct composition.

It allows you to recover the nice syntax from class inheritance when you use structs instead.

struct User {
    var name: String
    var age: Int
}

struct Friend {
    // using
    let user: User
    var friendshipDate: Date
}

friend.name // with class inheritance
friend.user.name // with struct composition :(
friend.name // with struct composition and using !!

Usage

1. Annotate a property with a comment: // using

struct Friend {
    ...
    // using          <- add this comment
    let user: User
    ...
}

Note that both types must be in the same file. See Known limitations below.

2. Run the command line tool

⚠️ This command will overwrite the original file so make sure you have a copy or you're using a versioning control system like Git in case something goes wrong.

swiftusing /path/to/file

Installation

Clone the repo and run make install.

Known limitations

• Basic declaration syntax let/var identifier: Type
• Reliant on comments (is just an external tool after all)
• Single file, using types must be in the same file.
• No collision detection, the compiler will error instead.

## Acknowledgements

• Jonathan Blow for sharing the development of Jai
• pointfree for the informative and inspiring videos
• Swift AST Explorer
• swift-syntax obviously!
• Yaap
• PackageBuilder

Contributions & support

SwiftUsing is developed completely in the open, and your contributions are more than welcome.

This project does not come with GitHub Issues-based support, and users are instead encouraged to become active participants in its continued development — by fixing any bugs that they encounter, or improving the documentation wherever it’s found to be lacking.

If you wish to make a change, open a Pull Request — even if it just contains a draft of the changes you’re planning, or a test that reproduces an issue — and we can discuss it further from there.

Author

Alejandro Martinez | http://alejandromp.com | @alexito4