Swift 4 JSON Decodable simplest way to decode type change

Question

With Swift 4's Codable protocol there's a great level of under the hood date and data conversion strategies.

Given the JSON:

{
    "name": "Bob",
    "age": 25,
    "tax_rate": "4.25"
}

I want to coerce it into the following structure

struct ExampleJson: Decodable {
    var name: String
    var age: Int
    var taxRate: Float

    enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
       case name, age 
       case taxRate = "tax_rate"
    }
}

The Date Decoding Strategy can convert a String based date into a Date.

Is there something that does that with a String based Float

Otherwise I've been stuck with using CodingKey to bring in a String and use a computing get:

    enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
       case name, age 
       case sTaxRate = "tax_rate"
    }
    var sTaxRate: String
    var taxRate: Float { return Float(sTaxRate) ?? 0.0 }

This sort of strands me doing more maintenance than it seems should be needed.

Is this the simplest manner or is there something similar to DateDecodingStrategy for other type conversions?

Update: I should note: I've also gone the route of overriding

init(from decoder:Decoder)

But that is in the opposite direction as it forces me to do it all for myself.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, I don't believe such an option exists in the current JSONDecoder API. There only exists an option in order to convert exceptional floating-point values to and from a string representation.

Another possible solution to decoding manually is to define a Codable wrapper type for any LosslessStringConvertible that can encode to and decode from its String representation:

struct StringCodableMap<Decoded : LosslessStringConvertible> : Codable {

    var decoded: Decoded

    init(_ decoded: Decoded) {
        self.decoded = decoded
    }

    init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {

        let container = try decoder.singleValueContainer()
        let decodedString = try container.decode(String.self)

        guard let decoded = Decoded(decodedString) else {
            throw DecodingError.dataCorruptedError(
                in: container, debugDescription: """
                The string (decodedString) is not representable as a (Decoded.self)
                """
            )
        }

        self.decoded = decoded
    }

    func encode(to encoder: Encoder) throws {
        var container = encoder.singleValueContainer()
        try container.encode(decoded.description)
    }
}

Then you can just have a property of this type and use the auto-generated Codable conformance:

struct Example : Codable {

    var name: String
    var age: Int
    var taxRate: StringCodableMap<Float>

    private enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
        case name, age
        case taxRate = "tax_rate"
    }
}

Although unfortunately, now you have to talk in terms of taxRate.decoded in order to interact with the Float value.

However you could always define a simple forwarding computed property in order to alleviate this:

struct Example : Codable {

    var name: String
    var age: Int

    private var _taxRate: StringCodableMap<Float>

    var taxRate: Float {
        get { return _taxRate.decoded }
        set { _taxRate.decoded = newValue }
    }

    private enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
        case name, age
        case _taxRate = "tax_rate"
    }
}

Although this still isn't as a slick as it really should be – hopefully a later version of the JSONDecoder API will include more custom decoding options, or else have the ability to express type conversions within the Codable API itself.

However one advantage of creating the wrapper type is that it can also be used in order to make manual decoding and encoding simpler. For example, with manual decoding:

struct Example : Decodable {

    var name: String
    var age: Int
    var taxRate: Float

    private enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
        case name, age
        case taxRate = "tax_rate"
    }

    init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
        let container = try decoder.container(keyedBy: CodingKeys.self)

        self.name = try container.decode(String.self, forKey: .name)
        self.age = try container.decode(Int.self, forKey: .age)
        self.taxRate = try container.decode(StringCodableMap<Float>.self,
                                            forKey: .taxRate).decoded
    }
}