Is there a way to get at a unique identifier for types? I'm doing some interesting things with protocols and find myself needing this for internal bookkeeping. Here's an example of the problem I'm encountering:
protocol M {
}
extension M {
func whoami() -> String {
return "\(Self.self)"
}
}
struct A: M {
}
class B {
struct A: M {
}
let a = A()
}
let a = A()
let b = B()
print("Hello")
print("a: \(a.whoami())")
print("b.a: \(b.a.whoami())")
This outputs:
a: A
b.a: A
However, I'd like to be able to disambiguate between the global "A" type and the "A" defined within class "B". I've tried looking at type(of: self) and Mirror(reflecting: self), but those seem to output the same value. Seems like if there's a way at getting the mangled compiled symbol name, that might solve my problem, but I don't see a way to get at that programmatically.
The only solution I've found is to do something like this:
protocol M {
static var _typeId: UUID { get }
}
But it forces all conformers to add some boilerplate static var _typeId = UUID() that just adds noise.
I tried extending the protocol:
extension M {
static var _typeId = UUID()
}
But then I get an error: static stored properties not supported in protocol extensions
Anyone have any other suggestions that's cleaner for protocol conformers?