How to take action when a property changes

Paul Hudson    @twostraws    October 9th 2021

Updated for Xcode 15

Swift lets us create property observers, which are special pieces of code that run when properties change. These take two forms: a didSet observer to run when the property just changed, and a willSet observer to run before the property changed.

To see why property observers might be needed, think about code like this:

struct Game {
    var score = 0
}

var game = Game()
game.score += 10
print("Score is now \(game.score)")
game.score -= 3
print("Score is now \(game.score)")
game.score += 1

That creates a Game struct, and modifies its score a few times. Each time the score changes, a print() line follows it so we can keep track of the changes. Except there’s a bug: at the end the score changed without being printed, which is a mistake.

With property observers we can solve this problem by attaching the print() call directly to the property using didSet, so that whenever it changes – wherever it changes – we will always run some code.

Here’s that same example, now with a property observer in place:

struct Game {
    var score = 0 {
        didSet {
            print("Score is now \(score)")
        }
    }
}

var game = Game()
game.score += 10
game.score -= 3
game.score += 1

If you want it, Swift automatically provides the constant oldValue inside didSet, in case you need to have custom functionality based on what you were changing from. There’s also a willSet variant that runs some code before the property changes, which in turn provides the new value that will be assigned in case you want to take different action based on that.

We can demonstrate all this functionality in action using one code sample, which will print messages as the values change so you can see the flow when the code is run:

struct App {
    var contacts = [String]() {
        willSet {
            print("Current value is: \(contacts)")
            print("New value will be: \(newValue)")
        }

        didSet {
            print("There are now \(contacts.count) contacts.")
            print("Old value was \(oldValue)")
        }
    }
}

var app = App()
app.contacts.append("Adrian E")
app.contacts.append("Allen W")
app.contacts.append("Ish S")

Yes, appending to an array will trigger both willSet and didSet, so that code will print lots of text when run.

In practice, willSet is used much less than didSet, but you might still see it from time to time so it’s important you know it exists. Regardless of which you choose, please try to avoid putting too much work into property observers – if something that looks trivial such as game.score += 1 triggers intensive work, it will catch you out on a regular basis and cause all sorts of performance problems.

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