Class casting dynamically in swift

Question

I am trying to dyanmically cast to a class in Swift. Is this possible? Here is the code I am trying to use:

let stringClass: AnyClass = NSString.self
let anyObje         


        

Answer 1

While there are/will be ways to make this kind of thing work, the Swifty solution (IMO) is to have your desired classes adhere to a protocol that defines the shared behavior you're trying to use, or simply use a super class they have in common

This allows the dynamism requried (in most cases at least) while still allowing the compile-time checks that prevent run time errors.

For your example,

protocol Stringable {
    func toString() -> String
}

extension String: Stringable {
    func toString() -> String {
        return self
    }
}

let thing = "foo"
let anything: Any = thing
let test: String? = (anything as? Stringable)?.toString()

Note that this requires "Any" rather than "AnyObject" since you need to cast to a protocol

Since you mentioned ViewControllers, I thought this might help:

static func createViewController(storyboard: String, scene: String) -> T? {
    return  UIStoryboard(name: storyboard, bundle: nil).instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier(scene) as? T
}