[Swift4] Model initializer with required properties only

[sadanro100]

To illustrate my problem I'm going to use the Client model available below. In our Client model, there are 26 properties, where only 3 are required (non-optional).

Client.swift.zip

In swagger-codegen-2.4.0 models are generated with no initializers, when a model has only optional properties, I'm able to initialize it with no arguments (so Client() is possible), however, when there's at least one required property the only initalizer available forces me to pass values to the required arguments and nil to the rest, as follows:

let client = Client(cpf: clientCPF, name: clientName, email: clientEmail, alternateEmail: nil, motherName: nil, birthDate: nil, maritalStatus: nil, maritalPartner: nil, identityDocuments: nil, personalPhones: nil, residentialAddress: nil, professionalData: nil, birthCity: nil, birthState: nil, graduation: nil, fatherName: nil, nationality: nil, residenceType: nil, gender: nil, clientReferences: nil, clientAssets: nil, residenceLiveYears: nil, consultCreditDataAuthorization: nil, proxy: nil, paymentOption: nil, debitAccount: nil)

I'd like to have an initializer with only required properties, like:

let client = Client(cpf: clientCPF, name: clientName, email: clientEmail)

Being forced to pass nil to all optional properties when initializing a model when I only need a couple of properties looks really bad.

Is it possible to have another initializer that takes only required properties?

swagger-codegen-2.4.0

java -jar ~/Documents/projects/swagger/swagger-codegen-2.4.0/modules/swagger-codegen-cli/target/swagger-codegen-cli.jar generate -i /Users/me/Downloads/swagger.json -l swift4 -o /Users/me/Downloads/swagger-output

[deanWombourne]

Another option here is to add = nil to all optional properties (which would require generating an explicit init method for the model struct) but would allow you to choose all/any/none of the optional properties when you were calling init.

i.e.

struct Client {
    ...
    let email: String
    let alternateEmail: String?
    ...

    /// Generate an explicit init with default values for optionals.
    init(..., email: String, alternateEmail: String? = nil, ...) {
    }
}

[sadanro100]

We ended up doing that... we customized the moustache template and generate the client code using the template parameter

[deanWombourne]

FYI: I've raised this as an issue on the swagger 3 template repo as well: https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-codegen-generators/issues/467

[sadanro100]

We're no longer using codegen, we moved on to openAPI, we then modified its Models moustache template

[deanWombourne]

Yea, that's a much better idea, I've just done the same with far more success than the swagger 3 branch in this repo :)

By any chance have you looked at other alternatives (i.e. https://github.com/yonaskolb/SwagGen)? I'm looking around to refresh our tools and would be interested in other people's opinions on what works / doesn't - if you have time, obvs!

[sadanro100]

I did have a look at was available two years ago when I started at the job where I'm right now, at the time, codegen seemed to be the best option for our iOS clients since other clients (web, android...) were already using it. Now that I understand exactly how codegen works, I'm sure that was the right choice, specially because it uses Alamofire behind and its architecture for intercepting requests, retrying failed requests, handling errors and so on is pretty clear and straighforward.