How to use compactMap() to transform an array
Swift version: 5.6
The compactMap() method lets us transform the elements of an array just like map() does, except once the transformation completes an extra step happens: all optionals get unwrapped, and any nil values get discarded.
This is useful whenever you have an array of things you need to convert, but the conversion process might fail.
For example, consider this array of strings:
let numbers = ["1", "2", "Fish"]Two of those hold a number, but one does not. We can use compactMap() to convert those to integers, because creating an Int from a String is a failable initializer – it returns an Int? because you might have passed an invalid number.
compactMap() will read those optional integers, unwrap all the optionals for us, then discard any items that returned nil, all in one line of code:
let integers = numbers.compactMap { Int($0) }When that code runs, integers will hold an array of Int rather than an array of Int?.
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