Resolving Picker Value Persistence Issues in SwiftUI with AppStorage

Описание: Learn how to use AppStorage in SwiftUI's `Picker` to save and retrieve unique values for each view, ensuring data persistence across app sessions.
---
This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/72148542/ asked by the user 'Laren' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/16069313/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/72148905/ provided by the user 'Carter Foughty' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/10302671/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

Visit these links for original content and any more details, such as alternate solutions, latest updates/developments on topic, comments, revision history etc. For example, the original title of the Question was: SwiftUI, AppStorage and using Picker in TabViews

Also, Content (except music) licensed under CC BY-SA https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/l...
The original Question post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... ) license, and the original Answer post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... ) license.

If anything seems off to you, please feel free to write me at vlogize [AT] gmail [DOT] com.
---
Resolving Picker Value Persistence Issues in SwiftUI with AppStorage

When working with SwiftUI to create a multi-tabbed user interface, you might encounter challenges when trying to save and manage data using Picker and AppStorage. A common issue arises when you want to maintain individual selections across various views. If not handled correctly, you might find that changing one selection inadvertently modifies other selections, leading to data loss or incorrect values upon reopening your app. In this guide, we'll address this issue and provide a solution to implement AppStorage effectively for unique selections in SwiftUI.

The Problem: Sharing Values Across Views

Let's say you have a structure to hold your data, such as an Animals class. Each animal can have different types (e.g., dog breeds and cat breeds). When you create a Picker for each animal in a tab view, it might seem intuitive to link a single AppStorage variable for selections. However, this leads to sharing the same value across all selections, resulting in all Pickers reflecting the same choice. This is not the desired behavior when your aim is to allow separate selections for each tab or view.

The Solution: Unique AppStorage for Each Animal

To maintain individual selections, you should utilize the unique id property of your Animals structure. By doing so, you can correspondingly create unique storage keys for each AppStorage variable. Here's how to implement this approach:

Step 1: Modify the AnimalSelectionView Structure

You'll want to revise the AnimalSelectionView to set the AppStorage variable with a key that includes the unique id of the specific Animal. Below is the modified code:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Step 2: Understand Unique Key Assignment

This line of code self._animalSelection = AppStorage(wrappedValue: 0, "selection-(animals.id)") ensures that each instance of AnimalSelectionView will reference a unique storage location in UserDefaults based on the animal's id. This means that even if two animals share the same name or types, their selections will remain separate because they are stored under different keys.

Step 3: Instantiation Considerations

When instantiating your Animals, ensure that each one has a unique id. For example:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Each Animals object is different, and thus you can correctly retrieve and store the selection values independently.

Step 4: Consider App Persistence

To maintain unique identifiers across app sessions, you might want to explore options such as storing your animals in CoreData or assigning static ids based on their properties. Here’s how you could define a static ID:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Alternatively, you could generate IDs based on the properties of the animal, ensuring data integrity. Just remember that if properties are identical, IDs will also be identical, which can lead to conflicts on retrieval and storage.

Conclusion

Handling selections individually in SwiftUI with Picker and AppStorage is crucial for an intuitive user experience. Utilizing unique IDs to manage AppStorage allows for seamless data persistence across views and app sessions. By following the steps outlined above, you can effectively manage different Picker selections without overwriting each other, leading to a smoother user interaction in your SwiftUI applications.

Implementing this solution not only enhances functionality but also gives you a robust method for managing local data storage effortlessly.