Example of Dispatch_Once in Swift

Whither dispatch_once in Swift 3?

Since Swift 1.x, Swift has been using dispatch_once behind the scenes to perform thread-safe lazy initialization of global variables and static properties.

So the static var above was already using dispatch_once, which makes it sort of weird (and possibly problematic to use it again as a token for another dispatch_once. In fact there's really no safe way to use dispatch_once without this kind of recursion, so they got rid of it. Instead, just use the language features built on it:

// global constant: SomeClass initializer gets called lazily, only on first use
let foo = SomeClass()

// global var, same thing happens here
// even though the "initializer" is an immediately invoked closure
var bar: SomeClass = {
    let b = SomeClass()
    b.someProperty = "whatever"
    b.doSomeStuff()
    return b
}()

// ditto for static properties in classes/structures/enums
class MyClass {
    static let singleton = MyClass()
    init() {
        print("foo")
    }
}

So that's all great if you've been using dispatch_once for one-time initialization that results in some value -- you can just make that value the global variable or static property you're initializing.

But what if you're using dispatch_once to do work that doesn't necessarily have a result? You can still do that with a global variable or static property: just make that variable's type Void:

let justAOneTimeThing: () = {
    print("Not coming back here.")
}()

And if accessing a global variable or static property to perform one-time work just doesn't feel right to you -- say, you want your clients to call an "initialize me" function before they work with your library -- just wrap that access in a function:

func doTheOneTimeThing() {
    justAOneTimeThing
}

See the migration guide for more.

dispatch_once after the Swift 3 GCD API changes

From the doc:

Dispatch

The free function dispatch_once is no longer available in
Swift. In Swift, you can use lazily initialized globals or static
properties and get the same thread-safety and called-once guarantees
as dispatch_once provided. Example:

let myGlobal: () = { … global contains initialization in a call to a closure … }()
_ = myGlobal  // using myGlobal will invoke the initialization code only the first time it is used.

Using a dispatch_once singleton model in Swift

tl;dr: Use the class constant approach if you are using Swift 1.2 or above and the nested struct approach if you need to support earlier versions.

From my experience with Swift there are three approaches to implement the Singleton pattern that support lazy initialization and thread safety.

Class constant

class Singleton  {
   static let sharedInstance = Singleton()
}

This approach supports lazy initialization because Swift lazily initializes class constants (and variables), and is thread safe by the definition of let. This is now officially recommended way to instantiate a singleton.

Class constants were introduced in Swift 1.2. If you need to support an earlier version of Swift, use the nested struct approach below or a global constant.

Nested struct

class Singleton {
    class var sharedInstance: Singleton {
        struct Static {
            static let instance: Singleton = Singleton()
        }
        return Static.instance
    }
}

Here we are using the static constant of a nested struct as a class constant. This is a workaround for the lack of static class constants in Swift 1.1 and earlier, and still works as a workaround for the lack of static constants and variables in functions.

dispatch_once

The traditional Objective-C approach ported to Swift. I'm fairly certain there's no advantage over the nested struct approach but I'm putting it here anyway as I find the differences in syntax interesting.

class Singleton {
    class var sharedInstance: Singleton {
        struct Static {
            static var onceToken: dispatch_once_t = 0
            static var instance: Singleton? = nil
        }
        dispatch_once(&Static.onceToken) {
            Static.instance = Singleton()
        }
        return Static.instance!
    }
}

See this GitHub project for unit tests.

dispatch_once singleton in Swift

This is from this Ray Wenderlich tutorial, right? Swift doesn't have static variables that can be scoped to functions, but you can nest a type inside a function, and give it static variable. Here's a Swift equivalent version of the start of that method:

func heightForBasicCellAtIndexPath(indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> CGFloat {
    struct Static {
        static var sizingCell: RWBasicCell?
    }

    if Static.sizingCell == nil {
        Static.sizingCell = tableView.dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier(RWBasicCellIdentifier) as RWBasicCell
    }

    // ...
}

How do I execute code once and only once in Swift?

Static properties initialized by a closure are run lazily and at most once, so this prints only once, in spite of being called twice:

/*
run like:

    swift once.swift
    swift once.swift run

to see both cases
*/
class Once {
    static let run: Void = {
        print("Behold! \(__FUNCTION__) runs!")
        return ()
    }()
}

if Process.arguments.indexOf("run") != nil {
    let _ = Once.run
    let _ = Once.run
    print("Called twice, but only printed \"Behold\" once, as desired.")
} else {
    print("Note how it's run lazily, so you won't see the \"Behold\" text now.")
}

Example runs:

~/W/WhenDoesStaticDefaultRun> swift once.swift
Note how it's run lazily, so you won't see the "Behold" text now.
~/W/WhenDoesStaticDefaultRun> swift once.swift run
Behold! Once runs!
Called twice, but only printed "Behold" once, as desired.

dispatch_once what means Always call this function before using or testing any variables that are initialized by the block. in documentation?

This simply means that if you initialize sharedInstance inside the block passed to dispatch_once, you need to make sure that dispatch_once is called prior to accessing sharedInstance for the first time. In other words, if you access any variable that is set for the first time by dispatch_once, the value that you read may be uninitialized.

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