'How to automatically create an initializer for a Swift class?
UPDATE: Use structs and not classes. Struct is better in many ways has got an initializer of its own.
This is my model class. Is it possible to create the init method automatically? Everytime I have to initialize all the variables one by one and it costs a lot of time.
class Profile {
var id: String
var name: String
var image: String
init(id: String, name: String, image: String) {
self.id = id
self.name = name
self.image = image
}
}
I want self.id = id and other variables to initialize automatically.
Solution 1:[1]
Update As of Xcode 11.4
You can refactor (right-click mouse menu) to generate the memberwise initializer for class and struct.
Note that struct automatic initializers are internal. You may want to generate memberwise initializer when defining a module to make it public.
Right-click > Refactor > 'Generate Memberwise Initializer'
For older Xcode
There are handy plugins:
https://github.com/rjoudrey/swift-init-generator https://github.com/Bouke/SwiftInitializerGenerator
Solution 2:[2]
Given the following class (or for structs if temporarily change the keyword struct to class and after refactor set back to struct):
class MyClass {
let myIntProperty: Int
let myStringProperty: String
let myOptionalStringProperty: String?
let myForcedUnwrappedOptionalStringProperty: String!
}
Go to Xcode and:
- Double click the class name
- Right click
- Refactor
- Generate Member-wise Initializer
Above steps look like this:
Just a tiny second later, Xcode generates this initializer:
internal init(myIntProperty: Int, myStringProperty: String, myOptionalStringProperty: String?, myForcedUnwrappedOptionalStringProperty: String?) {
self.myIntProperty = myIntProperty
self.myStringProperty = myStringProperty
self.myOptionalStringProperty = myOptionalStringProperty
self.myForcedUnwrappedOptionalStringProperty = myForcedUnwrappedOptionalStringProperty
}
Solution 3:[3]
No, there is no such feature for classes. But, if you design this as a struct, you get an memberwise initializer for free — assuming you don't define others initializers yourself.
For instance:
struct Point {
var x: Float
var y: Float
}
...
var p = Point(x: 1, y: 2)
From The Swift Programming Language book:
Structure types automatically receive a memberwise initializer if they do not define any of their own custom initializers. Unlike a default initializer, the structure receives a memberwise initializer even if it has stored properties that do not have default values.
The memberwise initializer is a shorthand way to initialize the member properties of new structure instances. Initial values for the properties of the new instance can be passed to the memberwise initializer by name.
Sources
This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Source: Stack Overflow
| Solution | Source |
|---|---|
| Solution 1 | TT-- |
| Solution 2 | |
| Solution 3 | Community |


