Republished

A collection of tools for working with observable objects in SwiftUI.

• Motivation
• Tools
• Installation

Motivation

Using an ObservableObject is a great way to connect your app's data model to your views. A property marked with the @Published attribute publishes changes during the willSet block causing the observable object's ObjectWillChangePublisher to emit. This is the primary mechanism SwiftUI uses to monitor changes to your data model.

A problem can occur when trying to compose multiple observable objects. For example, let's say we have a counter feature:

class CounterModel: ObservableObject {
  @Published var value = 0
}

struct CounterView: View {
  @ObservedObject var counter: CounterModel

  var body: some View {
    HStack {
      Button("-") { self.counter.value -= 1 }
      Text("\(self.counter.value)")
      Button("+") { self.counter.value += 1 }
    }
  }
}

and wanted to create an app with two counters and a total value, it might seem reasonable to do the following:

class AppModel: ObservableObject {
  @Published var first = CounterModel()
  @Published var second = CounterModel()

  var totalValue: Int { 
    self.first.value + self.second.value
  }
}

struct AppView: View {
  @StateObject var appModel = AppModel()

  var body: some View {
    VStack {
      CounterView(counter: appModel.first)
      CounterView(counter: appModel.second)
      Divider()
      Text("\(appModel.totalValue)")
    }
  }
}

However, this doesn't work how you might expect. The totalValue never changes, even though the counters are marked with the @Published attribute. This is because CounterModel is a class, so the objectWillChange publisher on AppModel will only emit when the counter instance changes, not when the counter value changes.

There are multiple approach to observing changes to nested observable objects. This library offers one possible way by introducing the @Republished attribute. It also explores some additional ideas related to composing observable objects, such as dependency injection with the @Dependency attribute and working with a subset of an objects properties using @ScopedValue/@ScopedBinding.

Tools

Republished

A type that republishes changes of observable objects:

class AppModel: ObservableObject {
  @Republished var counter = CounterModel()
}

also works with optional observable objects and collections of observable objects:

class AppModel: ObservableObject {
  @Republished var optionalCounter: CounterModel?

  @Republished var counters: [CounterModel] = [
    CounterModel(),
    CounterModel(),
  ]
}

Republished objects with properties using the @Dependency attribute automatically inherit dependencies from their parent. This can be disabled like so:

class AppModel: ObservableObject {
  @Republished(inheritDependencies: false) var counter = CounterModel()
}

synchronize(_:_:)

Synchronizes published properties:

class AppModel: ObservableObject {
  let first: CounterModel
  let second: CounterModel

  @Published var value = 0

  var cancellable: AnyCancellable?

  init(first: CounterModel, second: CounterModel) {
    self.first = first
    self.second = second
    
    self.cancellable = synchronize(
      &first.$value,
      &second.$value,
      &self.$value
    )
  }
}

ScopedValue

A property wrapper type for observing a property on an environment object supplied by a parent or ancestor view.

struct CountView: View {
  @ScopedValue(\CounterModel.value) var count
  
  var body: some View {
    Text("Count: \(self.count)")
  }
}

ScopedBinding

A property wrapper type that can read and write a value on an environment object supplied by a parent or ancestor view.

struct CounterView: View {
  @ScopedBinding(\CounterModel.value) var count

  var body: some View {
    HStack {
      Button("-") { self.count -= 1 }
      Text("\(self.count)")
      Button("+") { self.count += 1 }
    }
  }
}

ScopedAction

A property wrapper type that can call a function on an environment object supplied by a parent or ancestor view.

struct CounterView: View {
  @ScopedValue(\CounterModel.value) var count
  @ScopedAction(CounterModel.decrement) var decrementCount
  @ScopedAction(CounterModel.increment) var incrementCount

  var body: some View {
    HStack {
      Button("-") { self.decrementCount() }
      Text("\(self.count)")
      Button("+") { self.incrementCount() }
    }
  }
}

UnobservedEnvironmentObject

A property wrapper type for accessing an object supplied by a parent or ancestor view without observing changes.

struct CounterView: View {
  @ScopedValue(\CounterModel.value) var count
  @UnobservedEnvironmentObject var counter: CounterModel

  var body: some View {
    HStack {
      Button("-") { self.counter.decrement() }
      Text("\(self.count)")
      Button("+") { self.counter.increment() }
    }
  }
}

Dependency

Similar to SwiftUI's @Environment attribute but for observable objects instead of views.

class TwentySideDie: ObservableObject {
  @Dependency(\.numberGenerator) var numberGenerator
  @Published var value: Int = 20

  func roll() {
    self.value = self.numberGenerator.random(in: 1...20)
  }
}

Dependencies

Dependencies can be defined by defining a type that conforst to the DependencyKey protocol, and then extending the dependencies structure with a new property:

struct NumberGenerator {
  var random: (ClosedRange<Int>) -> Int

  func random(in range: ClosedRange<Int>) -> Int {
    self.random(range)
  }

  static let `default` = Self { Int.random(in: $0) }
}

enum NumberGeneratorKey: DependencyKey {
  static let defaultValue: NumberGenerator = .default
}

extension Dependencies {
  var numberGenerator: NumberGenerator {
    get { self[NumberGeneratorKey.self] }
    set { self[NumberGeneratorKey.self] = newValue }
  }
}

WithDependencies

withDependencies(_:_:)

Installation

You can add Republished to an Xcode project by adding it as a package dependency.

https://github.com/iampatbrown/Republished