SwiftSemantics

SwiftSemantics is a package that lets you parse Swift code into its constituent declarations.

Use SwiftSyntax to construct an abstract syntax tree from Swift source code, then walk the AST with the provided DeclarationCollector (or with your own SyntaxVisitor-conforming type) and construct a Declaration value for each visited DeclSyntax node:

import SwiftSyntax
import SwiftSemantics

let source = #"""
import UIKit

class ViewController: UIViewController, UITableViewDelegate {
    enum Section: Int {
        case summary, people, places
    }

    var people: [People], places: [Place]

    @IBOutlet private(set) var tableView: UITableView!
}
"""#

var collector = DeclarationCollector()
let tree = try SyntaxParser.parse(source: source)
collector.walk(tree)

// Import declarations
collector.imports.first?.pathComponents // ["UIKit"]

// Class declarations
collector.classes.first?.name // "ViewController"
collector.classes.first?.inheritance // ["UIViewController", "UITableViewDelegate"]

// Enumeration declarations
collector.enumerations.first?.name // "Section"

// Enumeration case declarations
collector.enumerationCases.count // 3
collector.enumerationCases.map { $0.name } // ["summary", "people", "places"])

// Variable (property) declarations
collector.variables.count // 3
collector.variables[0].name // "people"
collector.variables[1].typeAnnotation // "[Place]"
collector.variables[2].name // "tableView"
collector.variables[2].typeAnnotation // "UITableView!"
collector.variables[2].attributes.first?.name // "IBOutlet"
collector.variables[2].modifiers.first?.name // "private"
collector.variables[2].modifiers.first?.detail // "set"

Note: For more information about SwiftSyntax, see this article from NSHipster.

This package is used by swift-doc in coordination with SwiftMarkup to generate documentation for Swift projects (including this one).

Requirements

• Swift 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, or 5.5

Installation

Swift Package Manager

Add the SwiftSemantics package to your target dependencies in Package.swift:

// swift-tools-version:5.3

import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
  name: "YourProject",
  dependencies: [
    .package(
        name: "SwiftSemantics",
        url: "https://github.com/SwiftDocOrg/SwiftSemantics",
        .exact("0.3.2")
    )
  ]
)

If your project has a direct dependency SwiftSyntax, use the declaration below that corresponds to your Swift language version:

// Swift 5.2
.package(url: "https://github.com/apple/swift-syntax.git",
         .exact("0.50200.0")),

// Swift 5.3
.package(name: "SwiftSyntax",
         url: "https://github.com/apple/swift-syntax.git",
         .exact("0.50300.0")),

// Swift 5.4
.package(name: "SwiftSyntax",
         url: "https://github.com/apple/swift-syntax.git",
         .revision("release/5.4")),

// Swift 5.5
.package(name: "SwiftSyntax",
         url: "https://github.com/apple/swift-syntax.git",
         .revision("release/5.5")),

Detailed Design

Swift defines 17 different kinds of declarations, each of which is represented by a corresponding type in SwiftSemantics that conforms to the Declaration protocol:

• AssociatedType
• Class
• ConditionalCompilationBlock
• Deinitializer
• Enumeration
• Enumeration.Case
• Extension
• Function
• Import
• Initializer
• Operator
• PrecedenceGroup
• Protocol
• Structure
• Subscript
• Typealias
• Variable

Note: Examples of each declaration are provided in the documentation as well as unit tests.

The Declaration protocol itself has no requirements. However, adopting types share many of the same properties, such as attributes, modifiers, and keyword.

SwiftSemantics declaration types are designed to maximize the information provided by SwiftSyntax, closely following the structure and naming conventions of syntax nodes. In some cases, the library takes additional measures to refine results into more conventional interfaces. For example, the PrecedenceGroup type defines nested Associativity and Relation enumerations for greater convenience and type safety. However, in other cases, results may be provided in their original, raw String values; this decision is typically motivated either by concern for possible future changes to the language or simply out of practicality.

For the most part, these design decisions allow developers with even a basic understanding of Swift to work productively with parsed declarations. There are, however, some details that warrant further discussion:

Type Members Aren’t Provided as Properties

In Swift, a class, enumeration, or structure may contain one or more initializers, properties, subscripts, and methods, known as members. A type can itself be a member of another type, such as with CodingKeys enumerations nested within Codable-conforming types. Likewise, a type may also have one or more associated type or type alias members.

SwiftSemantics doesn’t provide built-in support for accessing type members directly from declaration values. This is probably the most surprising (and perhaps contentious) design decision made in the library so far, but we believe it to be the most reasonable option available.

One motivation comes down to delegation of responsibility: DeclarationCollector and other types conforming to SyntaxVisitor walk the abstract syntax tree, respond to nodes as they’re visited, and decide whether to visit or skip a node’s children. If a Declaration were to initialize its own members, it would have the effect of overriding the tree walker’s decision to visit or skip any children. We believe that an approach involving direct member initialization is inflexible and more likely to produce unexpected results. For instance, if you wanted to walk the AST to collect only Swift class declarations, there wouldn’t be a clear way to avoid needlessly initializing the members of each top-level class without potentially missing class declarations nested in other types.

But really, the controlling motivation has to do with extensions — especially when used across multiple files in a module. Consider the following two Swift files in the same module:

// First.swift
enum A { enum B { } }

// Second.swift
extension A.B { static func f(){} }

The first file declares two enumerations: A and B, which is nested in A. The second file declares an extension on the type A.B that provides a static function f(). Depending on the order in which these files are processed, the extension on A.B may precede any knowledge of A or B. The capacity to reconcile these declarations exceeds that of any individual declaration (or even a syntax walker), and any intermediate results would necessarily be incomplete and therefore misleading.

// Third.swift
#if platform(linux)
enum C {}
#else
protocol P {}
extension A.B where T: P { static func g(){} }
#end

Instead, our approach delegates the responsibility for reconciling declaration contexts to API consumers.

This is the approach we settled on for swift-doc, and it’s worked reasonably well so far. That said, we’re certainly open to hearing any alternative approaches and invite you to share any feedback about project architecture by opening a new Issue.

Not All Language Features Are Encoded

Swift is a complex language with many different rules and concepts, and not all of them are represented directly in SwiftSemantics.

Declaration membership, discussed in the previous section, is one such example. Another is how declaration access modifiers like public and private(set) aren’t given any special treatment; they’re Modifier values like any other.

This design strategy keeps the library narrowly focused and more adaptable to language evolution over time.

You can extend SwiftSemantics in your own code to encode any missing language concepts that are relevant to your problem. For example, SwiftSemantics doesn’t encode the concept of property wrappers, but you could use it as the foundation of your own representation:

protocol PropertyWrapperType {
    var attributes: [Attribute] { get }
}

extension Class: PropertyWrapperType {}
extension Enumeration: PropertyWrapperType {}
extension Structure: PropertyWrapperType {}

extension PropertyWrapperType {
    var isPropertyWrapper: Bool {
        return attributes.contains { $0.name == "propertyWrapper" }
    }
}

Declarations Don’t Include Header Documentation or Source Location

Documentation comments, like regular comments and whitespace, are deemed by SwiftSyntax to be “trivia” for syntax nodes. To keep this library narrowly focused, we don’t provide a built-in functionality for symbol documentation (source location is omitted from declarations for similar reasons).

If you wanted to do this yourself, you could subclass DeclarationCollector and override the visit delegate methods to retrieve, parse, and associate documentation comments with their corresponding declaration. Alternatively, you can use SwiftDoc, which — in conjunction with SwiftMarkup — does offer this functionality.

Known Issues

• Xcode cannot run unit tests (⌘U) when opening the SwiftSemantics package directly, as opposed first to generating an Xcode project file with swift package generate-xcodeproj. (The reported error is: Library not loaded: @rpath/lib_InternalSwiftSyntaxParser.dylib). As a workaround, you can install the latest toolchain and enable it in “Xcode > Preferences > Components > Toolchains”. Alternatively, you can run unit tests from the command line with swift test.

License

MIT

Contact

Mattt (@mattt)