Cannot change the value of a global variable - ios

Question

I just wrote some Swift code for accessing Riot API, with Alamofire and SwiftyJSON.
I wrote a function func getIDbyName(SummName: String) -> String to get the summoner id.
As you can see from the code below, I am assigning the id to self.SummID.
After executing the function, I am able to println the correct id, for example "1234567". However, the return self.SummID returns "0", the same as assigned in the beginning.
I tried to mess with the code, but I simply cannot get the correct value of self.SummID outside of the Alamofire.request closure. It always remain "0" anywhere outside.
I think it has something to do with the scope of the variable. Does anyone know what is going on here?
import Foundation
import Alamofire
import SwiftyJSON
class SummInfo {
var SummName = "ThreeSmokingGuns"
var SummID = "0"
var SummChamp = "akali"
var SummS1 = "flash"
var SummS2 = "ignite"
var SummRank = "Unranked"
var SummWR = "-" //summoner's winrate
let api_key = "key"
let URLinsert = "?api_key="
init(SummName: String, SummChamp: String, SummS1: String, SummS2: String, SummRank: String, SummWR: String) {
self.SummName = SummName
self.SummChamp = SummChamp
self.SummS1 = SummS1
self.SummS2 = SummS2
self.SummRank = SummRank
self.SummWR = SummWR
}
init(SummName: String) {
self.SummName = SummName
}
func getIDbyName(SummName: String) -> String
{
let SummURL = "https://na.api.pvp.net/api/lol/na/v1.4/summoner/by-name/"
var fullURL = "\(SummURL)\(SummName)\(URLinsert)\(api_key)"
Alamofire.request(.GET, fullURL)
.responseJSON { (request, response, data, error) in
if let anError = error
{
// got an error in getting the data, need to handle it
println("error calling GET on /posts/1")
println(error)
}
else if let data: AnyObject = data // hate this but responseJSON gives us AnyObject? while JSON() expects AnyObject
// JSON(data!) will crash if we get back empty data, so we keep the one ugly unwrapping line
{
// handle the results as JSON, without a bunch of nested if loops
let post = JSON(data)
self.tempJ = post
var key = post.dictionaryValue.keys.array //not necessary
var key2 = post[SummName.lowercaseString].dictionaryValue.keys.array
self.SummID = post[key[0],key2[2]].stringValue //[profileIconId, revisionDate, id, summonerLevel, name]
//test console output
println("The post is: \(post.description)")
println(SummName.lowercaseString)
println(key)
println(key2)
println(self.SummID)
}
}
return self.SummID
}
}

Answer 1

The reason is that
Alamofire.request(.GET, fullURL)
.responseJSON
is an asynchronous call. This means that the call to getIDbyName will immediately return without waiting the responseJSON to finish. This is the exact reason why you get a the '0' value for ID that you have set initially.
Having said that, the solution is to have a call back closure in the getIDbyName method:
func getIDbyName(SummName: String, callback: (id:String?) ->() ) -> ()
{
let SummURL = "https://na.api.pvp.net/api/lol/na/v1.4/summoner/by-name/"
var fullURL = "\(SummURL)\(SummName)\(URLinsert)\(api_key)"
Alamofire.request(.GET, fullURL)
.responseJSON { (request, response, data, error) in
if let anError = error
{
// got an error in getting the data, need to handle it
println("error calling GET on /posts/1")
println(error)
//Call back closure with nil value
callback(nil) //Can additionally think of passing actual error also here
}
else if let data: AnyObject = data // hate this but responseJSON gives us AnyObject? while JSON() expects AnyObject
// JSON(data!) will crash if we get back empty data, so we keep the one ugly unwrapping line
{
// handle the results as JSON, without a bunch of nested if loops
let post = JSON(data)
self.tempJ = post
var key = post.dictionaryValue.keys.array //not necessary
var key2 = post[SummName.lowercaseString].dictionaryValue.keys.array
self.SummID = post[key[0],key2[2]].stringValue //[profileIconId, revisionDate, id, summonerLevel, name]
//test console output
println("The post is: \(post.description)")
println(SummName.lowercaseString)
println(key)
println(key2)
println(self.SummID)
//Pass the actual ID got.
callback(self.SummID)
}
}
return self.SummID
}
And clients should always use this API to fetch the latest ID, and can refer the attribute directly to get whatever is cached so far in SummID member.
Here is how to call this method-
object.getIDbyName(sumName){ (idString :String) in
//Do whatever with the idString
}