Initializer for conditional binding must have Optional type, not 'String'

Question

Here is a fun issue I'm running into after updating to Swift 2.0

The error is on the if let url = URL.absoluteString line

func myFormatCompanyMessageText(attributedString: NSMutableAttributedString) -> NSMutableAttributedString {     // Define text font     attributedString.addAttribute(NSFontAttributeName, value: UIFont(name: "Montserrat-Light", size: 17)!, range: NSMakeRange(0, attributedString.length))      return attributedString }  func textView(textView: UITextView, shouldInteractWithURL URL: NSURL, inRange characterRange: NSRange) -> Bool {     if let url = URL.absoluteString {         if #available(iOS 8.0, *) {             VPMainViewController.showCompanyMessageWebView(url)         }     }     return false } 

Answer 1

The compiler is telling you that you can't use an if let because it's totally unnecessary. You don't have any optionals to unwrap: URL is not optional, and the absoluteString property isn't optional either. if let is used exclusively to unwrap optionals. If you want to create a new constant named url, just do it:

func textView(textView: UITextView, shouldInteractWithURL URL: NSURL, inRange characterRange: NSRange) -> Bool {     let url = URL.absoluteString     if #available(iOS 8.0, *) {         VPMainViewController.showCompanyMessageWebView(url)     }     return false } 

However, sidenote: having a parameter named URL and a local constant named url is mighty confusing. You might be better off like this:

func textView(textView: UITextView, shouldInteractWithURL URL: NSURL, inRange characterRange: NSRange) -> Bool {     if #available(iOS 8.0, *) {         VPMainViewController.showCompanyMessageWebView(URL.absoluteString)     }     return false }