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SOLVED: Trailing closure on the View protocol

Forums > SwiftUI

I’ve completed the Swift part of the 100 Days of SwiftUI and am on to the first project; but I have a question about the SwiftUI View protocol.

My question is around the trailing closure in, say, this code:

var body: some View {
    NavigationView {
        Form {
            Picker("Select your student", selection: $selectedStudent) {
                ForEach(students, id: \.self) {
                    Text($0)
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Now, I think I have trailing closures understood in my head, but I am not understanding here is what it belongs to. body is a var, which is some sort of View, and then a closure immediately follows.

So far, I have understood this to mean that the last parameter of an initialiser is a closure, here expressed as a trailing closure. Is that closure a part of the View protocol somehow? I did look at the source but couldn’t work it out. Perhaps a protocol extension?

2      

https://www.hackingwithswift.com/books/ios-swiftui/understanding-the-basic-structure-of-a-swiftui-app#:~:text=Third%2C%20var%20body%3A%20some%20View%20defines%20a%20new,to%20the%20View%20protocol%2C%20which%20is%20our%20layout.

Third, var body: some View defines a new computed property called body, which has an interesting type: some View. This means it will return something that conforms to the View protocol, which is our layout. Behind the scenes this will actually result in a very complicated data type being returned based on all the things in our layout, but some View means we don’t need to worry about that.`

body is a computed property and is not using a closure. You're saying there's a body property that is of type some View and it's value is a computed one not an assigned one like:

let someInt = 25

a simpler computed property:

var computedInt: Int {
    5 * 5
}

and now body as a computed property:

var body: some View {
    Text("Hello, world!)
}

The picker is an example of where you are using a trailing closure: Picker(titleKey: LocalizedStringKey, selection: Binding< >, content: () -> _)

You specify the first two values and then provide a closure for the content:

Picker("Select your student", selection: $selectedStudent) {
   ForEach(students, id: \.self) {
        Text($0)
   }
}

The same with ForEach. It also has a trailing closure.

see also: https://www.donnywals.com/what-are-computed-properties-in-swift-and-when-should-you-use-them/#:~:text=A%20computed%20property%20in%20Swift%20is%20a%20property,a%20very%20basic%20example%20of%20a%20computed%20property%3A

3      

The trailing closure is just executable code, and in this case, it is the content paramter if you had put the whole function in longhand.

Same as this:

      Picker("title goes here", selection: $selectedStudent, content: {
          ForEach(students, id:\.self){
              Text($0)
          }
      })

2      

Hi,

Can I ask in @vtabmow comment the syntax is like below? What does ->_ mean? I thought underscore is for omitting the parameter name, here it looks like a return type.

The picker is an example of where you are using a trailing closure:

Picker(titleKey: LocalizedStringKey, selection: Binding< >, content: () -> _)

Thanks Bin

2      

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