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You're reading from  Object???Oriented Programming with Swift 2

Product typeBook
Published inJan 2016
Reading LevelIntermediate
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ISBN-139781785885693
Edition1st Edition
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Gaston C. Hillar
Gaston C. Hillar
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Gaston C. Hillar

Gaston C. Hillar is Italian and has been working with computers since he was 8 years old. Gaston has a Bachelor's degree in computer science (graduated with honors) and an MBA. Currently, Gaston is an independent IT consultant and a freelance author who is always looking for new adventures anywhere in the world. He was a senior contributing editor at Dr. Dobb's, and has written more than a hundred articles on software development topics. He has received the prestigious Intel Black Belt Software Developer award eight times. He has written many articles about Java for Oracle Java Magazine. Gaston was also a former Microsoft MVP in technical computing. He lives with his wife, Vanesa, and his two sons, Kevin and Brandon.
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Declaring associated types in protocols


Now, we want to declare a PartyProtocol protocol and make the generic Party<T> class conform to this new protocol. The main challenge is to specify the type for both the method arguments and returned values. In the generic class, we will use the generic type parameter, but protocols don't allow us to use them.

Associated types allow us to solve the problem. We can declare one or more associated types as part of the protocol definition. In this case, we just need one associated type to provide us with a placeholder name—also known as alias—to a type that we will use as part of the protocol and that will be specified during the protocol implementation—that is, when we declare a class that conforms to the protocol. It is just necessary to use the typealias keyword followed by the desired name for the associated type, and then, we can use the name in our requirements' declarations.

The following lines show the declaration of the PartyProtocol protocol...

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Object???Oriented Programming with Swift 2
Published in: Jan 2016Publisher: ISBN-13: 9781785885693

Author (1)

author image
Gaston C. Hillar

Gaston C. Hillar is Italian and has been working with computers since he was 8 years old. Gaston has a Bachelor's degree in computer science (graduated with honors) and an MBA. Currently, Gaston is an independent IT consultant and a freelance author who is always looking for new adventures anywhere in the world. He was a senior contributing editor at Dr. Dobb's, and has written more than a hundred articles on software development topics. He has received the prestigious Intel Black Belt Software Developer award eight times. He has written many articles about Java for Oracle Java Magazine. Gaston was also a former Microsoft MVP in technical computing. He lives with his wife, Vanesa, and his two sons, Kevin and Brandon.
Read more about Gaston C. Hillar