How do I use custom keys with Swift 4's Decodable protocol?

Question

Swift 4 introduced support for native JSON encoding and decoding via the Decodable protocol. How do I use custom keys for this?

E.g., say I have a struct

struct Address:Codable {
    var street:String
    var zip:String
    var city:String
    var state:String
}

I can encode this to JSON.

let address = Address(street: "Apple Bay Street", zip: "94608", city: "Emeryville", state: "California")

if let encoded = try? encoder.encode(address) {
    if let json = String(data: encoded, encoding: .utf8) {
        // Print JSON String
        print(json)

        // JSON string is 
           { "state":"California", 
             "street":"Apple Bay Street", 
             "zip":"94608", 
             "city":"Emeryville" 
           }
    }
}

I can encode this back to an object.

    let newAddress: Address = try decoder.decode(Address.self, from: encoded)

But If I had a json object that was

{ 
   "state":"California", 
   "street":"Apple Bay Street", 
   "zip_code":"94608", 
   "city":"Emeryville" 
}

How would I tell the decoder on Address that zip_code maps to zip? I believe you use the new CodingKey protocol, but I can't figure out how to use this.

Answer 1

Manually customising coding keys

In your example, you're getting an auto-generated conformance to Codable as all your properties also conform to Codable. This conformance automatically creates a key type that simply corresponds to the property names – which is then used in order to encode to/decode from a single keyed container.

However one really neat feature of this auto-generated conformance is that if you define a nested enum in your type called "CodingKeys" (or use a typealias with this name) that conforms to the CodingKey protocol – Swift will automatically use this as the key type. This therefore allows you to easily customise the keys that your properties are encoded/decoded with.

So what this means is you can just say:

struct Address : Codable {

    var street: String
    var zip: String
    var city: String
    var state: String

    private enum CodingKeys : String, CodingKey {
        case street, zip = "zip_code", city, state
    }
}

The enum case names need to match the property names, and the raw values of these cases need to match the keys that you're encoding to/decoding from (unless specified otherwise, the raw values of a String enumeration will the same as the case names). Therefore, the zip property will now be encoded/decoded using the key "zip_code".

The exact rules for the auto-generated Encodable/Decodable conformance are detailed by the evolution proposal (emphasis mine):

In addition to automatic CodingKey requirement synthesis for enums, Encodable & Decodable requirements can be automatically synthesized for certain types as well:

1. Types conforming to Encodable whose properties are all Encodable get an automatically generated String-backed CodingKey enum mapping properties to case names. Similarly for Decodable types whose properties are all Decodable

2. Types falling into (1) — and types which manually provide a CodingKey enum (named CodingKeys, directly, or via a typealias) whose cases map 1-to-1 to Encodable/Decodable properties by name — get automatic synthesis of init(from:) and encode(to:) as appropriate, using those properties and keys

3. Types which fall into neither (1) nor (2) will have to provide a custom key type if needed and provide their own init(from:) and encode(to:), as appropriate

Example encoding:

import Foundation

let address = Address(street: "Apple Bay Street", zip: "94608",
                      city: "Emeryville", state: "California")

do {
    let encoded = try JSONEncoder().encode(address)
    print(String(decoding: encoded, as: UTF8.self))
} catch {
    print(error)
}
//{"state":"California","street":"Apple Bay Street","zip_code":"94608","city":"Emeryville"}

Example decoding:

// using the """ multi-line string literal here, as introduced in SE-0168,
// to avoid escaping the quotation marks
let jsonString = """
{"state":"California","street":"Apple Bay Street","zip_code":"94608","city":"Emeryville"}
"""

do {
    let decoded = try JSONDecoder().decode(Address.self, from: Data(jsonString.utf8))
    print(decoded)
} catch {
    print(error)
}

// Address(street: "Apple Bay Street", zip: "94608",
// city: "Emeryville", state: "California")

---

Automatic snake_case JSON keys for camelCase property names

In Swift 4.1, if you rename your zip property to zipCode, you can take advantage of the key encoding/decoding strategies on JSONEncoder and JSONDecoder in order to automatically convert coding keys between camelCase and snake_case.

Example encoding:

import Foundation

struct Address : Codable {
  var street: String
  var zipCode: String
  var city: String
  var state: String
}

let address = Address(street: "Apple Bay Street", zipCode: "94608",
                      city: "Emeryville", state: "California")

do {
  let encoder = JSONEncoder()
  encoder.keyEncodingStrategy = .convertToSnakeCase
  let encoded = try encoder.encode(address)
  print(String(decoding: encoded, as: UTF8.self))
} catch {
  print(error)
}
//{"state":"California","street":"Apple Bay Street","zip_code":"94608","city":"Emeryville"}

Example decoding:

let jsonString = """
{"state":"California","street":"Apple Bay Street","zip_code":"94608","city":"Emeryville"}
"""

do {
  let decoder = JSONDecoder()
  decoder.keyDecodingStrategy = .convertFromSnakeCase
  let decoded = try decoder.decode(Address.self, from: Data(jsonString.utf8))
  print(decoded)
} catch {
  print(error)
}

// Address(street: "Apple Bay Street", zipCode: "94608",
// city: "Emeryville", state: "California")

One important thing to note about this strategy however is that it won't be able to round-trip some property names with acronyms or initialisms which, according to the Swift API design guidelines, should be uniformly upper or lower case (depending on the position).

For example, a property named someURL will be encoded with the key some_url, but on decoding, this will be transformed to someUrl.

To fix this, you'll have to manually specify the coding key for that property to be string that the decoder expects, e.g someUrl in this case (which will still be transformed to some_url by the encoder):

struct S : Codable {

  private enum CodingKeys : String, CodingKey {
    case someURL = "someUrl", someOtherProperty
  }

  var someURL: String
  var someOtherProperty: String
}

---

_{(This doesn't strictly answer your specific question, but given the canonical nature of this Q&A, I feel it's worth including)}

Custom automatic JSON key mapping

In Swift 4.1, you can take advantage of the custom key encoding/decoding strategies on JSONEncoder and JSONDecoder, allowing you to provide a custom function to map coding keys.

The function you provide takes a [CodingKey], which represents the coding path for the current point in encoding/decoding (in most cases, you'll only need to consider the last element; that is, the current key). The function returns a CodingKey that will replace the last key in this array.

For example, UpperCamelCase JSON keys for lowerCamelCase property names:

import Foundation

// wrapper to allow us to substitute our mapped string keys.
struct AnyCodingKey : CodingKey {

  var stringValue: String
  var intValue: Int?

  init(_ base: CodingKey) {
    self.init(stringValue: base.stringValue, intValue: base.intValue)
  }

  init(stringValue: String) {
    self.stringValue = stringValue
  }

  init(intValue: Int) {
    self.stringValue = "\(intValue)"
    self.intValue = intValue
  }

  init(stringValue: String, intValue: Int?) {
    self.stringValue = stringValue
    self.intValue = intValue
  }
}

extension JSONEncoder.KeyEncodingStrategy {

  static var convertToUpperCamelCase: JSONEncoder.KeyEncodingStrategy {
    return .custom { codingKeys in

      var key = AnyCodingKey(codingKeys.last!)

      // uppercase first letter
      if let firstChar = key.stringValue.first {
        let i = key.stringValue.startIndex
        key.stringValue.replaceSubrange(
          i ... i, with: String(firstChar).uppercased()
        )
      }
      return key
    }
  }
}

extension JSONDecoder.KeyDecodingStrategy {

  static var convertFromUpperCamelCase: JSONDecoder.KeyDecodingStrategy {
    return .custom { codingKeys in

      var key = AnyCodingKey(codingKeys.last!)

      // lowercase first letter
      if let firstChar = key.stringValue.first {
        let i = key.stringValue.startIndex
        key.stringValue.replaceSubrange(
          i ... i, with: String(firstChar).lowercased()
        )
      }
      return key
    }
  }
}

You can now encode with the .convertToUpperCamelCase key strategy:

let address = Address(street: "Apple Bay Street", zipCode: "94608",
                      city: "Emeryville", state: "California")

do {
  let encoder = JSONEncoder()
  encoder.keyEncodingStrategy = .convertToUpperCamelCase
  let encoded = try encoder.encode(address)
  print(String(decoding: encoded, as: UTF8.self))
} catch {
  print(error)
}
//{"Street":"Apple Bay Street","City":"Emeryville","State":"California","ZipCode":"94608"}

and decode with the .convertFromUpperCamelCase key strategy:

let jsonString = """
{"Street":"Apple Bay Street","City":"Emeryville","State":"California","ZipCode":"94608"}
"""

do {
  let decoder = JSONDecoder()
  decoder.keyDecodingStrategy = .convertFromUpperCamelCase
  let decoded = try decoder.decode(Address.self, from: Data(jsonString.utf8))
  print(decoded)
} catch {
  print(error)
}

// Address(street: "Apple Bay Street", zipCode: "94608",
// city: "Emeryville", state: "California")