32
votes

The Swift documentation says that adding initializers in an extension is possible, and the example in the document is about adding an initializer to a struct. Xcode doesn't recognize UIColor's designated initializer in my convenience initializer:

extension UIColor {
  convenience init(rawValue red: CGFloat, green g: CGFloat, blue b: CGFloat, alpha a: CGFloat) {

    // Can not find out the designated initializer here
    self.init()

  }
}

Any solutions?

3

3 Answers

41
votes

You can't do it like this, you have to chose different parameter names to create your own initializers/ You can also make then generic to accept any BinaryInteger or BinaryFloatingPoint types:

extension UIColor {
    convenience init<T: BinaryInteger>(r: T, g: T, b: T, a: T = 255) {
        self.init(red: .init(r)/255, green: .init(g)/255, blue: .init(b)/255, alpha: .init(a)/255)
    }
    convenience init<T: BinaryFloatingPoint>(r: T, g: T, b: T, a: T = 1.0) {
        self.init(red: .init(r), green: .init(g), blue: .init(b), alpha: .init(a))
    }
}

let green1 = UIColor(r: 0, g: 255, b: 0, a: 255)  // r 0,0 g 1,0 b 0,0 a 1,0
let green2 = UIColor(r: 0, g: 1.0, b: 0, a: 1.0)  // r 0,0 g 1,0 b 0,0 a 1,0

let red1 = UIColor(r: 255, g: 0, b: 0)  // r 1,0 g 0,0 b 0,0 a 1,0
let red2 = UIColor(r: 1.0, g: 0, b: 0)  // r 1,0 g 0,0 b 0,0 a 1,0
3
votes

Well, if you really, really, really want to override an initialiser, there is a way.

Before you read further: never do this to change UIKit behaviour. Why? It could confuse the heck out of someone that can't figure out why a UIColor initialiser isn't doing what it normally does. Only do it to fix a UIKit bug, or add functionality, etc.

I have used the following to patch several iOS bugs.

Code

extension UIColor {

    private static var needsToOverrideInit = true

    override open class func initialize() {

        // Only run once - otherwise subclasses will call this too. Not obvious.

        if needsToOverrideInit {
            let defaultInit = class_getInstanceMethod(UIColor.self, #selector(UIColor.init(red:green:blue:alpha:)))
            let ourInit = class_getInstanceMethod(UIViewController.self, #selector(UIColor.init(_red:_green:_blue:_alpha:)))
            method_exchangeImplementations(defaultInit, ourInit)
            needsToOverrideInit = false
        }

    }

    convenience init(_red: CGFloat, _green: CGFloat, _blue: CGFloat, _alpha: CGFloat) {

        // This is trippy. We swapped implementations... won't recurse.
        self.init(red: _red, green: _green, blue: _blue, alpha: _alpha)

        /////////////////////////// 
        // Add custom logic here // 
        ///////////////////////////         

    }

}

Explanation

This is using the dynamic nature of Objective-C, called from Swift, to swap method definition pointers at runtime. If you don't know what this means, or implications of it, it is probably a good idea to read up on the topic before you use this code.

1
votes

Changing the parameter types will also work.

extension UIColor {

    convenience init(red: Int, green: Int, blue: Int, alpha: CGFloat) {

        let normalizedRed = CGFloat(red) / 255
        let normalizedGreen = CGFloat(green) / 255
        let normalizedBlue = CGFloat(blue) / 255

        self.init(red: normalizedRed, green: normalizedGreen, blue: normalizedBlue, alpha: alpha)
    }
}

Usage:

let newColor: UIColor = UIColor.init(red: 74, green: 74, blue: 74, alpha: 1)

I would usually forget the redundant work of dividing the component values by 255. So I made this method to facilitate me.