Store a closure as a variable in Swift

Question

In Objective-C, you can define a block's input and output, store one of those blocks that's passed in to a method, then use that block later:

// in .h

    typedef void (^APLCalibrationProgressHandler)(float percentComplete);
    typedef void (^APLCalibrationCompletionHandler)(NSInteger measuredPower, NSError *error);

    // in .m

    @property (strong) APLCalibrationProgressHandler progressHandler;
    @property (strong) APLCalibrationCompletionHandler completionHandler;

    - (id)initWithRegion:(CLBeaconRegion *)region completionHandler:(APLCalibrationCompletionHandler)handler
    {
        self = [super init];
        if(self)
        {
            ...
            _completionHandler = [handler copy];
            ..
        }

        return self;
}

- (void)performCalibrationWithProgressHandler:(APLCalibrationProgressHandler)handler
{
    ...

            self.progressHandler = [handler copy];

     ...
            dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
                _completionHandler(0, error);
            });
     ...
}

So I'm trying to do the equivilant in Swift:

var completionHandler:(Float)->Void={}


init() {
    locationManager = CLLocationManager()
    region = CLBeaconRegion()
    timer = NSTimer()
}

convenience init(region: CLBeaconRegion, handler:((Float)->Void)) {
    self.init()
    locationManager.delegate = self
    self.region = region
    completionHandler = handler
    rangedBeacons = NSMutableArray()
}

The compiler doesn't like that declaration of completionHandler. Not that I blame it, but, how do I define a closure that can be set and used later in Swift?

Answer 1

The compiler complains on

var completionHandler: (Float)->Void = {}

because the right-hand side is not a closure of the appropriate signature, i.e. a closure taking a float argument. The following would assign a "do nothing" closure to the completion handler:

var completionHandler: (Float)->Void = {
    (arg: Float) -> Void in
}

and this can be shortened to

var completionHandler: (Float)->Void = { arg in }

due to the automatic type inference.

But what you probably want is that the completion handler is initialized to nil in the same way that an Objective-C instance variable is inititialized to nil. In Swift this can be realized with an optional:

var completionHandler: ((Float)->Void)?

Now the property is automatically initialized to nil ("no value"). In Swift you would use optional binding to check of a the completion handler has a value

if let handler = completionHandler {
    handler(result)
}

or optional chaining:

completionHandler?(result)