Access Variables of ViewController Before Popping To It - ios

Question

I have a home button which triggers this code when pressed.
I need to change a variable within the viewController I am popping to before I pop to it. Is there any way to do this?
func goHome(){
let switchViewController = self.navigationController?.viewControllers[1] as! UIViewController
self.navigationController?.popToViewController(switchViewController, animated: true)
}
This is how I thought you would go about it but no variables of the viewController appear in the autocomplete window.
switchViewController.x = 5
Any information on how to go about this and/or why this isn't working as is would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You're setting switchViewController as a generic UIViewController, which has no variable .x.
You should set it as the correct class, which in this case would be whatever you named the class that has the 'x' variable:
let switchViewController = self.navigationController?.viewControllers[1] as! SwitchViewController
switchViewController.x = 5
In this case I've used the class name SwitchViewController, which means you'd need a .Swift class file like so:
import UIKit
class SwitchViewController: UIViewController {
var x: Int!
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
}
override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
}
}

Answer 2

What type of UIViewController your switchViewController is?
In order to have custom variables in the the UIViewController, you would need to subclass it, and when getting it back, you would do it like this:
func goHome(){
let switchViewController = self.navigationController?.viewControllers[1] as! YourViewController
self.navigationController?.popToViewController(switchViewController, animated: true)
}
Taking x as the example variable, UIViewController has no variable of this type, but your subclass (which i expect you have one) of UIViewController might have, and then auto-complete would kick in.