SwiftyUserDefaults

Modern Swift API for NSUserDefaults

SwiftyUserDefaults makes user defaults enjoyable to use by combining expressive Swifty API with the benefits of static typing. Define your keys in one place, use value types easily, and get extra safety and convenient compile-time checks for free.

Read Statically-typed NSUserDefaults for more information about this project.

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Features • Usage • Custom types • Traditional API • Installation • More info

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Features

There's only two steps to using SwiftyUserDefaults:

Step 1: Define your keys

extension DefaultsKeys {
    static let username = DefaultsKey<String?>("username")
    static let launchCount = DefaultsKey<Int>("launchCount")
}

Step 2: Just use it!

// Get and set user defaults easily
let username = Defaults[.username]
Defaults[.hotkeyEnabled] = true

// Modify value types in place
Defaults[.launchCount]++
Defaults[.volume] += 0.1
Defaults[.strings] += "… can easily be extended!"

// Use and modify typed arrays
Defaults[.libraries].append("SwiftyUserDefaults")
Defaults[.libraries][0] += " 2.0"

// Easily work with custom serialized types
Defaults[.color] = NSColor.whiteColor()
Defaults[.color]?.whiteComponent // => 1.0

The convenient dot syntax is only available if you define your keys by extending magic DefaultsKeys class. You can also just pass the DefaultsKey value in square brackets, or use a more traditional string-based API. How? Keep reading.

Usage

Define your keys

To get the most out of SwiftyUserDefaults, define your user defaults keys ahead of time:

let colorKey = DefaultsKey<String>("color")

Just create a DefaultsKey object, put the type of the value you want to store in angle brackets, the key name in parentheses, and you're good to go.

You can now use the Defaults shortcut to access those values:

Defaults[colorKey] = "red"
Defaults[colorKey] // => "red", typed as String

The compiler won't let you set a wrong value type, and fetching conveniently returns String.

Take shortcuts

For extra convenience, define your keys by extending magic DefaultsKeys class and adding static properties:

extension DefaultsKeys {
    static let username = DefaultsKey<String?>("username")
    static let launchCount = DefaultsKey<Int>("launchCount")
}

And use the shortcut dot syntax:

Defaults[.username] = "joe"
Defaults[.launchCount]

Just use it!

You can easily modify value types (strings, numbers, array) in place, as if you were working with a plain old dictionary:

// Modify value types in place
Defaults[.launchCount]++
Defaults[.volume] += 0.1
Defaults[.strings] += "… can easily be extended!"

// Use and modify typed arrays
Defaults[.libraries].append("SwiftyUserDefaults")
Defaults[.libraries][0] += " 2.0"

// Easily work with custom serialized types
Defaults[.color] = NSColor.whiteColor()
Defaults[.color]?.whiteComponent // => 1.0

Supported types

SwiftyUserDefaults supports all of the standard NSUserDefaults types, like strings, numbers, booleans, arrays and dictionaries.

Here's a full table:

Optional variant	Non-optional variant	Default value
String?	String	""
Int?	Int	0
Double?	Double	0.0
Bool?	Bool	false
NSData?	NSData	NSData()
[AnyObject]?	[AnyObject]	[]
[String: AnyObject]?	[String: AnyObject]	[:]
NSDate?	n/a	n/a
NSURL?	n/a	n/a
AnyObject?	n/a	n/a
NSString?	NSString	""
NSArray?	NSArray	[]
NSDictionary?	NSDictionary	[:]

You can mark a type as optional to get nil if the key doesn't exist. Otherwise, you'll get a default value that makes sense for a given type.

Typed arrays

Additionally, typed arrays are available for these types:

Array type	Optional variant
[String]	[String]?
[Int]	[Int]?
[Double]	[Double]?
[Bool]	[Bool]?
[NSData]	[NSData]?
[NSDate]	[NSDate]?

Custom types

You can easily store custom NSCoding-compliant types by extending NSUserDefaults with this stub subscript:

extension NSUserDefaults {
    subscript(key: DefaultsKey<NSColor?>) -> NSColor? {
        get { return unarchive(key) }
        set { archive(key, newValue) }
    }
}

Just copy&paste this and change NSColor to your class name.

Here's a usage example:

extension DefaultsKeys {
    static let color = DefaultsKey<NSColor?>("color")
}

Defaults[.color] // => nil
Defaults[.color] = NSColor.whiteColor()
Defaults[.color] // => w 1.0, a 1.0
Defaults[.color]?.whiteComponent // => 1.0

Custom types with default values

If you don't want to deal with nil when fetching a user default value, you can remove ? marks and supply the default value, like so:

extension NSUserDefaults {
    subscript(key: DefaultsKey<NSColor>) -> NSColor {
        get { return unarchive(key) ?? NSColor.clearColor() }
        set { archive(key, newValue) }
    }
}

Enums

In addition to NSCoding, you can store enum values the same way:

enum MyEnum: String {
    case A, B, C
}

extension NSUserDefaults {
    subscript(key: DefaultsKey<MyEnum?>) -> MyEnum? {
        get { return unarchive(key) }
        set { archive(key, newValue) }
    }
}

The only requirement is that the enum has to be RawRepresentable by a simple type like String or Int.

Existence

if !Defaults.hasKey(.hotkey) {
    Defaults.remove(.hotkeyOptions)
}

You can use the hasKey method to check for key's existence in the user defaults. remove() is an alias for removeObjectForKey(), that also works with DefaultsKeys shortcuts.

Shared user defaults

If you're sharing your user defaults between different apps or an app and its extensions, you can use SwiftyUserDefaults by overriding the Defaults shortcut with your own. Just add in your app:

var Defaults = NSUserDefaults(suiteName: "com.my.app")!

Traditional API

There's also a more traditional string-based API available. This is considered legacy API, and it's recommended that you use statically defined keys instead.

Defaults["color"].string            // returns String?
Defaults["launchCount"].int         // returns Int?
Defaults["chimeVolume"].double      // returns Double?
Defaults["loggingEnabled"].bool     // returns Bool?
Defaults["lastPaths"].array         // returns NSArray?
Defaults["credentials"].dictionary  // returns NSDictionary?
Defaults["hotkey"].data             // returns NSData?
Defaults["firstLaunchAt"].date      // returns NSDate?
Defaults["anything"].object         // returns NSObject?
Defaults["anything"].number         // returns NSNumber?

When you don't want to deal with the nil case, you can use these helpers that return a default value for non-existing defaults:

Defaults["color"].stringValue            // defaults to ""
Defaults["launchCount"].intValue         // defaults to 0
Defaults["chimeVolume"].doubleValue      // defaults to 0.0
Defaults["loggingEnabled"].boolValue     // defaults to false
Defaults["lastPaths"].arrayValue         // defaults to []
Defaults["credentials"].dictionaryValue  // defaults to [:]
Defaults["hotkey"].dataValue             // defaults to NSData()

Installation

CocoaPods

If you're using CocoaPods, just add this line to your Podfile:

pod 'SwiftyUserDefaults'

Install by running this command in your terminal:

pod install

Then import the library in all files where you use it:

import SwiftyUserDefaults

Carthage

Just add to your Cartfile:

github "radex/SwiftyUserDefaults"

Manually

Simply copy Sources/SwiftyUserDefaults.swift to your Xcode project.

More like this

If you like SwiftyUserDefaults, check out SwiftyTimer, which applies the same swifty approach to NSTimer.

You might also be interested in my blog posts which explain the design process behind those libraries:

• Swifty APIs: NSUserDefaults
• Statically-typed NSUserDefaults
• Swifty APIs: NSTimer
• Swifty methods

Contributing

If you have comments, complaints or ideas for improvements, feel free to open an issue or a pull request. Or ping me on Twitter.

Author and license

Radek Pietruszewski

• github.com/radex
• twitter.com/radexp
• radex.io
• [email protected]

SwiftyUserDefaults is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.