Introduction to Swift Keypaths

KeyPath<Root, Value>

We've seen this KeyPath before. What we did not really talk about yet is that this KeyPath is read only. You can't use it to modify properties, only to read properties. They're automatically used for accessing immutable properties or instances. Here're a couple of examples of these read-only keypaths:

struct ImmutableUser {

   // `let` properties are immutable

   let username: String

}

var firstUser = ImmutableUser(username: \"Shinji\")



// This will fail

firstUser[keyPath: \ImmutableUser.username] = \"Ikari\"



// Prints: KeyPath<ImmutableUser, String>

print(type(of: \ImmutableUser.username))

In this example, we could not edit the firstUser, because the username property was a let it was immutable. Just like firstUser.username = "Ikari" also would not have worked.

struct MutableUser {

   var username: String

}

var firstUser = MutableUser(username: \"Shinji\")



// This will work fine

firstUser[keyPath: \MutableUser.username] = \"Ikari\"

Here, it works fine, because

• firstUser is a var type
• MutableUser.username is a var type

So, if KeyPath is read-only and in this second example we could actually write to firstUser, then what is the type of \MutableUser.username here?