Delegate protocol implementation on Swift (kinda conceptual)

Question

I came across this scenario today and wondered if something like this already exists: a built in way to automatically delegate a protocol implementation in Swift.

I know it'd be only syntax sugar on the code, but I'm actually more curious than in need of this feature. Here's how it goes:

Because of bad architecture on my company's project, I ended up having to do something like this:

protocol Cat {
    func bark()
}

class A: Cat {
    func bark() {
        print("I love prog rock")
    }
}

class B: Cat {
    private let a = A()
    // all of Cat implementation on B should return A implemention of Cat
    func bark() {
        a.bark()
    }
}

In the real case, there are several protocol functions that I'm having to use A's implementation on B implementation :S (not just one, as illustrated).

So, I'm not asking what would be a better approach so that I don't have to delegate all of B's Cat implementation to A's Cat implementation. No.

What I'd like to know is:

given I have to do this, would there be a better way to do it?
Is there some built in solution, like, inside B scope: self.CatImpl = a.CatImpl.
Can you imagine any scenario where this would be actually useful (and not just a workaround for bad architecture management)?

What are your thoughts?

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 31 '22 at 21:01

To me, this implementation sounds pretty similar to the Proxy Design Pattern, where B proxies access to A. I has it's uses. Fixing bad architectural decisions is not one of them lol. If B always calls A and does nothing else, I'd consider adding tests to B and refactoring to replace it with A

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 31 '22 at 22:01

I am not entirely sure what it is your are trying to do, or what exactly your question is. I get that you are doing this because of "bad architecture", though I do not now what that bad architecture might be. But given that you have to do this, you could get the same effect by subclassing A in B. This would eliminate the need to have B's bark() method call A's bark() method. It would also eliminate the creation of an instance of A every time an instance of B was created, and hence would take up less memory, and run faster as well. I would see that as something like this;

protocol Cat {
  func bark()
}

class A: Cat {
  func bark() {
    print("I love prog rock")
  }
}

class B: A {
}

let a = A()
let b = B()

a.bark()
b.bark()

I do not know if that would fit your needs, but the output we be identical.

Delegate protocol implementation on Swift (kinda conceptual)

2 Answers2