3. KeyPaths conform to Hashable

We did not see an example of this yet, but it is one of my all-time favorite keypaths functions. Every KeyPath type is Hashable which means that it can be used as a key in a dictionary. One use case for this is storing meta information about properties in a dictionary. Here, we have a dictionary that maps from partial key paths to String. It stores two different keypaths (username, age) and their titles:

let meta: [PartialKeyPath<User>: String] = [

   \User.username: \"Your Username\",

   \User.age: \"Your Age\"

]

We can now write a function renderTitle that will retrieve this meta information and print it out alongside the actual value:

func renderTitle(on: User, keyPath: AnyKeyPath) {

   if let title = meta[keyPath] {

     print(title, terminator: \": \")

   }

   print(on[keyPath: keyPath])

}



let myUser = User(username: \"Jon\", age: 44)



renderTitle(on: myUser, keyPath: \User.age)

This would print Your Age: 44

This pattern can be used for many more situations. Whenever you have information about a type, you can utilize it to store the information. Another example would be input validation.