Yesterday, I was discussing initializing UIEdgeInsets. Developer Adam Sharp cleverly added computed properties to leveraging keypaths by extending the type to adopt ExpressibleByDictionaryLiteral:

extension UIEdgeInsets: ExpressibleByDictionaryLiteral {
    public typealias Key = WritableKeyPath<UIEdgeInsets, CGFloat>
    public typealias Value = CGFloat
    
    public init(dictionaryLiteral elements: (WritableKeyPath<UIEdgeInsets, CGFloat>, CGFloat)...) {
        self = UIEdgeInsets()
        for (inset, value) in elements {
            self[keyPath: inset] = value
        }
    }
}

This approach lets you use a dictionary literal to initialize your type:

let insets: UIEdgeInsets = [\.left: 8]
print(insets) // (l: 8.0, r: 0.0, t: 0.0, b: 0.0)

Pop in a few custom properties, specifically horizontal, vertical, and all, and you have a really cute way of initializing edge insets without building a plethora of custom initializers, keeping the API boundary (Thanks Daniel J) nice and compact:

public extension UIEdgeInsets {
   public var vertical: CGFloat {
        get { return 0 } // meaningless but not fatal
        set { (top, bottom) = (newValue, newValue) }
    }
    
    public var horizontal: CGFloat {
        get { return 0 } // meaningless but not fatal
        set { (left, right) = (newValue, newValue) }
    }
    
    public var all: CGFloat {
        get { return 0 } // meaningless but not fatal
        set { (vertical, horizontal) = (newValue, newValue) }
    }
}

Unfortunately, you must supply a getter: a WriteableKeyPath is a “key path that supports reading from and writing to the resulting value.” (Emphasis mine.) That’s why I included the silly return 0 statements for each getter. I originally put in a fatal error but that only got me grief because the values were being read before writing.

Incidentally, Swift does not allow you to build a write-only type for compound abstractions like these. Just in case you were thinking of going that way with your code, here’s what you can expect:

With the dictionary-initializable approach, you may use a dictionary literal with as many or as few key paths as you need to fully customize your instance:

let insets2: UIEdgeInsets = [\.vertical: 8, \.horizontal: 20]
print(insets2) // (l: 8.0 , r: 20.0, t: 8.0, b: 20.0)

let insets3: UIEdgeInsets = [\.all: 8]
print(insets3) // (l: 8.0 , r: 8.0, t: 8.0, b: 8.0)

Stephen Celis notes, “The nice thing about key paths are they’re compiler generated code. you can write a single initializer function and get everything for free without having to define one-off enums or initializers every time.”

This approach is generally useful enough that it’s worth abstracting out a little to support dictionary literal initialization for any type with uniformly-typed property members such as CGRect or CGPoint. Nate C came up with a very clever approach to do exactly that. Here’s a modified version of his approach:

/// Allows dictionary literal initialization for any
/// conforming type that declares `typealias Value`,
/// where `Value` refers to a uniform property Type
/// that can be set through a keypath-value dictionary
///
/// - Example:
///   ```
///   extension CGPoint : UniformKeypathInitializable {
///     public typealias Value = CGFloat
///   }
///
///   let p: CGPoint = [\.x: 0, \.y: 20]
///   ```
public protocol UniformKeypathInitializable : ExpressibleByDictionaryLiteral {
    /// Allow zero-argument initializer
    init()
    
}

extension UniformKeypathInitializable {
    /// Initializes each member of a keypath-value
    /// dictionary, allowing the type to be initialized
    /// with a dictionary literal
    public init(dictionaryLiteral elements: (WritableKeyPath<Self, Value>, Value)...) {
        self.init()
        for (property, value) in elements {
            self[keyPath: property] = value
        }
    }
}

You provide a typealias for `Value`, which in this case means the type of the values supplied in the dictionary, and the magic happens for you.:

extension UIEdgeInsets: UniformKeypathInitializable {
    public typealias Value = CGFloat
}

That’s all it takes. Add the custom compound properties and you’re good to go.

Interestingly enough, during this process, I came across possibly the most inscrutable Swift error message ever (which I believe is saying something). Here’s one of my early attempts before I found Nate’s solution, and the error it produced:

Gotta love Swift.

Anyway, if there are errors in the post, fixes, improvements, or suggestions (and you know there always will be), let me know. Email, tweet, comment, whatever you like. Thanks as always!