How do you create custom notifications in Swift 3?

Question

There is a cleaner (I think) way to achieve it

extension Notification.Name {

    static let onSelectedSkin = Notification.Name("on-selected-skin")
}

And then you can use it like this

NotificationCenter.default.post(name: .onSelectedSkin, object: selectedSkin)

You could also use a protocol for this

protocol NotificationName {
    var name: Notification.Name { get }
}

extension RawRepresentable where RawValue == String, Self: NotificationName {
    var name: Notification.Name {
        get {
            return Notification.Name(self.rawValue)
        }
    }
}

And then define your notification names as an enum anywhere you want. For example:

class MyClass {
    enum Notifications: String, NotificationName {
        case myNotification
    }
}

And use it like

NotificationCenter.default.post(name: Notifications.myNotification.name, object: nil)

This way the notification names will be decoupled from the Foundation Notification.Name. And you will only have to modify your protocol in case the implementation for Notification.Name changes.

Notification.post is defined as:

public func post(name aName: NSNotification.Name, object anObject: AnyObject?)

In Objective-C, the notification name is a plain NSString. In Swift, it's defined as NSNotification.Name.

NSNotification.Name is defined as:

public struct Name : RawRepresentable, Equatable, Hashable, Comparable {
    public init(_ rawValue: String)
    public init(rawValue: String)
}

This is kind of weird, since I would expect it to be an Enum, and not some custom struct with seemingly no more benefit.

There is a typealias in Notification for NSNotification.Name:

public typealias Name = NSNotification.Name

The confusing part is that both Notification and NSNotification exist in Swift

So in order to define your own custom notification, do somethine like:

public class MyClass {
    static let myNotification = Notification.Name("myNotification")
}

Then to call it:

NotificationCenter.default().post(name: MyClass.myNotification, object: self)

Easier way:

let name:NSNotification.Name = NSNotification.Name("notificationName")
NotificationCenter.default.post(name: name, object: nil)