Puttting it all together

In the next and final step, we're building the actual type that will be used as the proverbial type eraser. Just as before, lets have a look at the code first:

final class AnyComputer<Processor: CPU>: Computer {

     private let box: AnyComputerBase<Processor>

     var processor: Processor {

         return box.processor

     }

     var processorCount: Int {

         return box.processorCount

     }

     init<Concrete: Computer>(_ computer: Concrete) 

         where Concrete.ProcessorType == Processor {

       box = AnyComputerBox(computer)

     }

}

This AnyComputer conforms to the Computer protocol and is generic over the CPU type that the protocol requires. Once again, we implement the protocol requirements (processor, and processorCount) and forward to a boxed type. This time we're forwarding to private let box: AnyComputerBase<Processor>. This box is set in the initializer where most of the magic happens:

init<Concrete: Computer>(_ computer: Concrete) 

     where Concrete.ProcessorType == Processor {

   box = AnyComputerBox(computer)

}

The problem with protocols with associated types is that you can't use them as property types. Here, init requires any type conforming to the Computer protocol. This is done by having a method-generic type Concrete that requires Computer conformance. Even more, we also add a constraint that makes sure that the generic Processor type of the new AnyComputer class is the same type as the associated type of the Concrete Computer type.

And now comes the kicker: Since we cannot set a property as being of type Computer we, instead, have a property that is of AnyComputerBase with a generic type for the Processor. As our AnyComputerBox type is a subclass of AnyComputerBase we can literally put any box (that is a subclass of AnyComputerBase into this property. In this case, we're creating a new box with the Concrete Computer.

Then we return the implementations of the contents of the box (i.e. the actual Concrete Computer) in our Computer implementations:

var processorCount: Int {

     return box.processorCount

}

Using It

With all this machinery in place, we can finally use this in order to have different types (which share an associated type) in one container:

let powerComputers: [AnyComputer<PowerPC>] = 

     [AnyComputer(PowerMacG5()), AnyComputer(Xbox360())]