Swizzling in Swift
Change the Implementation at Runtime
Difficulty: Beginner | Easy | Normal | Challenging
This article has been developed using Xcode 11.5, and Swift 5.2.4
Terminology:
Runtime: The period of time where a program is running
Swizzling: Method Swizzling is the process of changing the implementation of an existing selector
Swizzling is called Monkey Patching in some languages, and this moves us towards understanding the attitude of the language feature. Furthermore, some people call it a hack or the nonsensical insult of an anti-pattern.
We are going to explore how this can be used in Swift, and a real example of the use in Swift
Swizzling under the hood
Method Swizzling is about changing the implementation of an existing selector at runtime. This is performed through Swift’s Witness table and the mapping of the underlying functions contained within.
