Store input number inside a variable from a textbox - ios

Question

In my application I have a textbox that should be filled with a Double and the number should be saved into a variable but there's an error.
I dragged and dropped the textbox into ViewController.swift so it should be linked. I created a #IBOutlet. I called the textbox mmolText and the variable mmol.
I tried something like: var mmol = mmolText.text but it shows an error:
'ViewController.Type' does not have a member named 'mmolText'.
What's the problem? How can I solve it? Besides the type of the content of the textbox is a string but I should convert it into Double.
Here the code of ViewController.swift is:
import UIKit
class ViewController: UIViewController {
#IBOutlet weak var mmolText: UITextField!
var mmol = mmolText.text
#IBOutlet weak var mmolLabel: UILabel!
#IBOutlet weak var mgLabel: UILabel!
#IBAction func convertBM(sender: AnyObject) {
}
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
}
override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
// Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
}
}

Answer 1

It seems like we probably simply want mmol to exist as a convenient way for getting the text property out of the mmolText textfield, right? So why not use a computed property:
var mmol: String {
get {
return mmolText.text ?? ""
}
set {
mmolText.text = newValue
}
}
The get makes use of the nil coalescing operator. UITextField's text property hasn't been updated with the Objective-C nullability annotations yet, so we need to handle the case of it potentially returning nil.
If we want this to be readonly, we can simply omit the set part.
If we want this as a Double, we can modify the above computed property to look more like this:
var mmol: Double {
get {
return ((mmolText.text ?? "0") as NSString).doubleValue
}
set {
mmolText.text = String("%f", newValue)
}
}
And again, if we want this to be readonly, we can simply omit the set half. And of course, the format string can be played around with to get the string version of the double to show up exactly as you intend when using this set method.

Answer 2

class ViewController: UIViewController {
#IBOutlet weak var mmolText: UITextField!
var mmol: String!
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
mmol = mmolText.text
}
}
This way it works. I can remember something like because at that stage, the properties can exist. Which means, it can be there or it isn't. That's why you can't do it like that.
Don't pin me on this explanation though, I'm not very sure.

Answer 3

mmolText is a property on self. You can't refer to it there because self has not been initialized yet.
You'll have to assign it within awakeFromNib, viewDidLoad, etc.