The goal

KeyedCodable is an addition to swift's Codable and it's designed for automatic nested key mappings. The goal it to avoid manual implementation of Encodable/Decodable and make encoding/decoding easier, more readable, less boilerplate and what is the most important fully compatible with 'standard' Codable.

Nested keys

First, please have a look on Codable example provided by Apple.

vanilla Codable:

struct Coordinate {
    var latitude: Double
    var longitude: Double
    var elevation: Double

    enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
        case latitude
        case longitude
        case additionalInfo
    }

    enum AdditionalInfoKeys: String, CodingKey {
        case elevation
    }
}

extension Coordinate: Decodable {
    init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
        let values = try decoder.container(keyedBy: CodingKeys.self)
        latitude = try values.decode(Double.self, forKey: .latitude)
        longitude = try values.decode(Double.self, forKey: .longitude)

        let additionalInfo = try values.nestedContainer(keyedBy: AdditionalInfoKeys.self, forKey: .additionalInfo)
        elevation = try additionalInfo.decode(Double.self, forKey: .elevation)
    }
}

extension Coordinate: Encodable {
    func encode(to encoder: Encoder) throws {
        var container = encoder.container(keyedBy: CodingKeys.self)
        try container.encode(latitude, forKey: .latitude)
        try container.encode(longitude, forKey: .longitude)

        var additionalInfo = container.nestedContainer(keyedBy: AdditionalInfoKeys.self, forKey: .additionalInfo)
        try additionalInfo.encode(elevation, forKey: .elevation)
    }
}

KeyedCodable:

struct Coordinate: Codable {
    var latitude: Double
    var longitude: Double
    var elevation: Double
    
    enum CodingKeys: String, KeyedKey {
        case latitude
        case longitude
        case elevation = "additionalInfo.elevation"
    }
}

By default dot is used as delimiter to separate the inner keys

@Flat classes

Flat classes feature allows you to group properties into smaller parts. In the example below you can see that:

• longitude and latitude are placed in json's main class but it is 'moved' into separate struct Location in the swift's model
• both longitude and latitude are optional. If any of them is missing, the location property will be nil.

Example JSON:

{
    "longitude": 3.2,
    "latitude": 3.4,
    
    "greeting": "hallo"
}

KeyedCodable:

struct InnerWithFlatExample: Codable {
    @Flat var location: Location?
    
    let greeting: String
}

struct Location: Codable {
    let latitude: Double
    let longitude: Double
}

Without property wrappers

struct InnerWithFlatExample: Codable {
    let location: Location?
    
    let greeting: String

    enum CodingKeys: String, KeyedKey {
        case greeting
        case location = ""
    }
}

By default empty string or whitespaces are used to mark flat class

@Flat arrays

Probably you found out that decoding an array will fail if decoding of any array's element fails. Flat array KeyedCodable's feature omits incorrect elements and creates array that contain valid elements only. In example below array property will contain three elements [1,3,4] though decoding second element fails.

{
    "array": [
        {
        "element": 1
        },
        {},
        {
        "element": 3
        },
        {
        "element": 4
        }
    ]
}

KeyedCodable:

struct OptionalArrayElementsExample: Codable {
    @Flat var array: [ArrayElement]
}

struct ArrayElement: Codable {
    let element: Int
}

Without property wrappers

struct OptionalArrayElementsExample: Codable {
    let array: [ArrayElement]

    enum CodingKeys: String, KeyedKey {
        case array = ".array"
    }
}

To enable flat array you have to add [flat][delimiter] before property name - by defult it is 'empty string + dot'

KeyOptions

In case of conflicts between json's keys and delimiters used by KeyedCodable, you may use KeyOptions to configure mapping features. You may do that by providing options: KeyOptions? property in your CodingKeys ( use nil to use default value). You may also disable the feature by setting .none value.

Examples

Example JSON:

{
    "* name": "John",
    "": {
        ".greeting": "Hallo world",
        "details": {
            "description": "Its nice here"
        }
    },
    "longitude": 3.2,
    "latitude": 3.4,
    "array": [
    {
    "element": 1
    },
    {},
    {
    "element": 3
    },
    {
    "element": 4
    }
    ],
    "* array1": [
    {
    "element": 1
    },
    {},
    {
    "element": 3
    },
    {
    "element": 4
    }
    ]
}

KeyedCodable:

struct KeyOptionsExample: Codable {
    let greeting: String
    let description: String
    let name: String
    let location: Location
    let array: [ArrayElement]
    let array1: [ArrayElement]


    enum CodingKeys: String, KeyedKey {
        case location = "__"
        case name = "* name"
        case greeting = "+.greeting"
        case description = ".details.description"

        case array = "### .array"
        case array1 = "### .* array1"

        var options: KeyOptions? {
            switch self {
            case .greeting: return KeyOptions(delimiter: .character("+"), flat: .none)
            case .description: return KeyOptions(flat: .none)
            case .location: return KeyOptions(flat: .string("__"))
            case .array, .array1: return KeyOptions(flat: .string("### "))
            default: return nil
            }
        }
    }
}

@Zero as default value

@Zero feature sets default "zero" value for the property in case value is not set in the JSON (no key at all or null value is set). If you find the situation there is no difference between 0 and nil from the business perspective you can easily get rid off optional from your codable.

Example JSON:

{
    "name": "Jan"
}

KeyedCodable:

struct ZeroTestCodable: Codable {
    var name: String                    // Jan
    
    @Zero var secondName: String        // "" - empty string
    @Zero var numberOfChildren: Int     // 0
    @Zero var point: Point              // Point(x: 0.0, y: 0.0)
}

struct Point: Codable {
    let x: Float
    let y: Float
}

Transformers - @CodedBy, @EncodedBy, @DecodedBy

Have you ever had a need of decoding a JSON having multiple Date formats in it ? Or maybe you had to add custom transformation from one value to another during decode/encode process and you had to write a lot of boilerplate code for manual coding ? Transformers are designed for making custom transformation a lot easier !

To add your custom transformer you have to implement DecodableTransformer, EncodableTransformer or Transformer for two way transformation.

Date formater example

Example JSON:

{
    "date": "2012-05-01"
}

Usage

struct DateCodableTrasform: Codable {

    @CodedBy<DateTransformer> var date: Date
}

Transformer

enum DateTransformer<Object>: Transformer {

    static func transform(from decodable: String) -> Any? {
        return formatter.date(from: decodable)
    }

    static func transform(object: Object) -> String? {
        guard let object = object as? Date else { return nil }
        return formatter.string(from: object)
    }
    
    
    private static var formatter: DateFormatter {
        let formatter = DateFormatter()
        formatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd"
        return formatter
    }
}

Non codable formater example

You can even implement transformer for non Codable model and use it in you Codable tree like that:

Example JSON:

{
    "user": 3
}

Usage

struct DetailPage: Codable {

    @CodedBy<UserTransformer> var user: User
}

struct User {           // User do not implement Codable protocol
    let id: Int
}

Transformer

enum UserTransformer<Object>: Transformer {
    static func transform(from decodable: Int) -> Any? {
        return User(id: decodable)
    }

    static func transform(object: Object) -> Int? {
        return (object as? User)?.id
    }
}

How to use?

To support nested key mappings you need to use KeyedKey intead of CodingKey for your CodingKeys enums and KeyedJSONEncoder/KeyedJSONDecoder in place standard JSONEncoder/JSONDecoder. Please notice that Keyed coders inherit from standard equivalents so they are fully compatible with Apple versions.

Codable extensions

struct Model: Codable {
    var property: Int
}

Decode from string:

let model = try Model.keyed.fromJSON(jsonString)

Decode from data:

let model = try Model.keyed.fromJSON(data)

Endcode to string:

model.keyed.jsonString() 

Encode to data:

model.keyed.jsonData() 

You can provide coders in method parameters in case you need additional setup

Coders

You can also use Keyed coders the same way as standard versions.

let model = try KeyedJSONDecoder().decode(Model.self, from: data)

let data = try KeyedJSONEncoder().encode(model)

It's worth to mention that Keyed coders supports simple types ie. String, Int etc. For example when we try to decode Int using standard JSONDecoder

let number = try JSONDecoder().decode(Int.self, from: data)

it will throw an incorrect format error. Keyed version will parse that with success.

Keyed<> wrapper

There is a possibility to use standard JSON coders and still encode/decode KeyedCodables. To do that you have to use Keyed<> wrapper:

let model = try JSONDecoder().decode(Keyed<Model>.self, from: data).value

let data = try JSONEncoder().encode(Keyed(model))

It may be useful in case you do not have an access to coder's initialization code. In that situation your model may looks like that:

struct KeyedModel: Codable { 
... 

    enum CodingKeys: String, KeyedKey {
        ....
    }
.... 
}

struct Model { 
    
    let keyed: Keyed<KeyedModel>    
}

Manual nested key coding

In case you need implement Codable manually you can use AnyKey for simpler access to nested keys.

private let TokenKey = AnyKey(stringValue: "data.tokens.access_token")

struct TokenModel: Codable {

    let token: Token

    init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
        let container = try decoder.container(keyedBy: AnyKey.self)
        token = try container.decode(Token.self, forKey: TokenKey)
    }

    func encode(to encoder: Encoder) throws {
        var container = encoder.container(keyedBy:  AnyKey.self)
        try container.encode(token, forKey: TokenKey)
    }
}

KeyedConfig

As mentioned earlier there is possibility to setup key options eg. delimiters on KeyedKey level but there is also possibility to setup it globally.

To do that you need to set the value of KeyedConfig.default.keyOptions.

Beside key opptions there is also possibility to setup coders used by default in Codable extensions.

Migration to 3.x.x version

Version 3.0.0 is backward compatible with version 2.x.x however you have to use swift 5.1 for all new features connected with @PropertyWrappers.

Migration to 2.x.x version

Unfortunately 2.x.x version is not compatible with 1.x.x versions but I believe that new way is much better and it brings less boilerplate than previous versions. There is no need to add any manual mapping implementation, it's really simple so I strongly recommend to migrate to new version. All you need is to:

• use KeyedJSONEncoder \ KeyedJSONDecoder instead of JSONEncoder \ JSONDecoder !!
• change you CodingKeys to KeyedKey and move your mappings here
• remove KeyedCodable protocol
• remove constructor and map method