Earlier today I was writing some code that looked like this:
if let foo = bar.foo {
fooLabel.text = foo
} else {
fooLabel.text = ""
}
if let baz = bar.baz {
bazLabel.text = baz
} else {
bazLabel.text = ""
}
I figured there had to be a cleaner way to express this. My initial thought process was to write an extension to String that does this. Very quickly though, I realized I need to extend Optional, not String.
So I came up with this:
extension Optional {
public func or(other: Wrapped) -> Wrapped {
if let ret = self {
return ret
} else {
return other
}
}
}
This allows me to now write:
fooLabel.text = bar.foo.or(other: "")
Much better!
Then I thought, there’s a way to make this even better for Optional<String> specifically. So I came up with this:
extension Optional where Wrapped == String {
public func orEmpty() -> String {
return self.or(other: "")
}
}
And voila! I can now write:
fooLabel.text = bar.foo.orEmpty()
Way better!