Delegates in swift?

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Delegates always confused me until I realized that a delegate is just a class that does some work for another class. It’s like having someone else there to do all the dirty work for you that you don’t want to do yourself.

I wrote a little story to illustrate this. Read it in a Playground if you like.

Once upon a time…

// MARK: Background to the story

// A protocol is like a list of rules that need to be followed.
protocol OlderSiblingDelegate: class {
    // The following command (ie, method) must be obeyed by any 
    // underling (ie, delegate) of the older sibling.
    func getYourNiceOlderSiblingAGlassOfWater()
}

// MARK: Characters in the story

class BossyBigBrother {
    
    // I can make whichever little sibling is around at 
    // the time be my delegate (ie, slave)
    weak var delegate: OlderSiblingDelegate?
    
    func tellSomebodyToGetMeSomeWater() {
        // The delegate is optional because even though 
        // I'm thirsty, there might not be anyone nearby 
        // that I can boss around.
        delegate?.getYourNiceOlderSiblingAGlassOfWater()
    }
}

// Poor little sisters have to follow (or at least acknowledge) 
// their older sibling's rules (ie, protocol)
class PoorLittleSister: OlderSiblingDelegate {

    func getYourNiceOlderSiblingAGlassOfWater() {
        // Little sis follows the letter of the law (ie, protocol),
        // but no one said exactly how she had to respond.
        print("Go get it yourself!")
    }
}

// MARK: The Story

// Big bro is laying on the couch watching basketball on TV.
let bigBro = BossyBigBrother()

// He has a little sister named Sally.
let sally = PoorLittleSister()

// Sally walks into the room. How convenient! Now big bro 
// has someone there to boss around.
bigBro.delegate = sally

// So he tells her to get him some water.
bigBro.tellSomebodyToGetMeSomeWater()

// Unfortunately no one lived happily ever after...

// The end.

In review, there are three key parts to making and using the delegate pattern.

  1. the protocol that defines what the worker needs to do
  2. the boss class that has a delegate variable, which it uses to tell the worker class what to do
  3. the worker class that adopts the protocol and does what is required

Real life

In comparison to our Bossy Big Brother story above, delegates are often used for the following practical applications:

  1. Communication: one class needs to send some information to another class.
    • Code example 1: sending data from one view controller to another
    • Code example 2: sending text input from a custom keyboard to a text field
  2. Customization: one class wants to allow another class to customize it.

The great part is that these classes don’t need to know anything about each other beforehand except that the delegate class conforms to the required protocol.

I highly recommend reading the following two articles. They helped me understand delegates even better than the documentation did.

  • What is Delegation? – A Swift Developer’s Guide
  • How Delegation Works – A Swift Developer’s Guide

One more note

Delegates that reference other classes that they do not own should use the weak keyword to avoid strong reference cycles. See this answer for more details.

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