How to exclude properties from Swift 4's Codable

Question

Swift 4's new Encodable/Decodable protocols make JSON (de)serialization quite pleasant. However, I have not yet found a way to have fine-grained control over which properties should be encoded and which should get decoded.

I have noticed that excluding the property from the accompanying CodingKeys enum excludes the property from the process altogether, but is there a way to have more fine-grained control?

Answer 1

The list of keys to encode/decode is controlled by a type called CodingKeys (note the s at the end). The compiler can synthesize this for you but can always override that.

Let's say you want to exclude the property nickname from both encoding and decoding:

struct Person: Codable {
    var firstName: String
    var lastName: String
    var nickname: String?

    private enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
        case firstName, lastName
    }
}

---

If you want it to be asymmetric (i.e. encode but not decode or vice versa), you have to provide your own implementations of encode(with encoder: ) and init(from decoder: ):

struct Person: Codable {
    var firstName: String
    var lastName: String

    // Since fullName is a computed property, it's excluded by default
    var fullName: String {
        return firstName + " " + lastName
    }

    private enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
        case firstName
        case lastName
        case fullName
    }

    init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
        let container = try decoder.container(keyedBy: CodingKeys.self)
        firstName = try container.decode(String.self, forKey: .firstName)
        lastName = try container.decode(String.self, forKey: .lastName)
    }

    func encode(to encoder: Encoder) throws {
        var container = encoder.container(keyedBy: CodingKeys.self)
        try container.encode(firstName, forKey: .firstName)
        try container.encode(lastName, forKey: .lastName)
        try container.encode(fullName, forKey: .fullName)
    }
}