Learn swift casting from examples

The first thing boring swift beginners is the weird ? and ! marks in different positions. Sometimes they follow as and followed by a class name such as as? Int, and sometimes they are right behind a class name like Int?. If you are not sure what Optional and Casting do in Swift(1.2), please check them out.

Let's start with a simple example where we have an explicitly defined valuable:

var str:String = "This is a single string"

var stringToOptional = str as String? //success
var stringToUnwrappedOptional = str as String! //success
var stringToNSString = str as NSString //success

In the above examples, as they have nothing to do with down-casting or up-casting, we don't need to use as? or as!, otherwise warning will be given. If the value of the str is not initialised, the new/target valuable has to be Optional:

var str:String!
var stringToOptional = str as String? //success
var stringToUnwrappedOptional = str as String! //run-time error

Now when it comes to the cases where as? and as! play their roles:

var dic:Dictionary<String, AnyObject> = ["key": "Value in the dictionary"]

//as?
var anyObjectOptionalCastingToString = dic["key"] as? String // => "Value in the dictionary"
var anyObjectOptionalCastingToInt = dic["key"] as? Int // nil

//as!
var anyObjectForceCastingToString = dic["key"] as! String // => "Value in the dictionary"
var anyObjectForceCastingToInt = dic["key"] as! Int // run-time error

To summarise when we should use which:

String? - when we allow a valuable to be nil.

String! - when we allow a valuable to be nil and ready for use its value without appending "!"

as? - when we do casting but are not sure if the casting will be successful

as! - when we do casting and are very sure the casting goes successfully