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iOS Swift Enums and Structs Structs and their Methods Initializers

Posted by RAJ PATEL
RAJ PATEL
4,282 Points

Can you help me explain "self" and init() method again?

I didn't quite get it. What is the need for "self" and init() method? All I can understand is that it has something to do with initializing the variable beforehand. So you don't have to do it afterwards? Maybe?

And if you can again explain me the two things separately without not having relationship to each other.. Also whenever you write init() method do we always need to write the var. as "self" in it?

1 Answer

Sam Chaudry
Sam Chaudry
25,519 Points
Sam Chaudry
Sam Chaudry
25,519 Points

Ok so Self is used to refer to an instance variable of that class, so for example you might have a label called name and you want to set it's text value to "Raj" within a class called Person. So your code would be

//Example label self.nameLabel.text = "Raj";

So here I am taking a variable called 'nameLabel' which belongs to the 'Person' class and setting it's text property to "Raj"

init on the other hand is short for initialiser this is the process of getting an object ready for use, this process may include setting properties of that class to a specific value.

//Class called person

class Person {

//Name property var name:String;

// initialising class with users name init(user:String){

   //Here we set the Person class name property to the user name. So when this object is ready for use the name will be        set to the users input
    self.name = user;

}

} //So we initialise the object with a string and set it the name property
var users = Person(user: "Raj");

//Then when we then access the name property it prints Raj to the console as it has been initialised with a user. var currentUser = users.name;