How to access UIAlertAction title property in Swift?

Question

I have a UIAlertController with multiple UIAlertActions. I am wanting to access the UIAlertAction title property of the selected action.

    let ac = UIAlertController(title: "Choose Filter", message: nil, preferredStyle: .actionSheet)
    ac.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "CIBumpDistortion", style: .default, handler: setFilter))
    ac.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "CIGaussianBlur", style: .default, handler: setFilter))
    ac.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "CIPixellate", style: .default, handler: setFilter))
    ac.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "CISepiaTone", style: .default, handler: setFilter))
    ac.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "CITwirlDistortion", style: .default, handler: setFilter))
    ac.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "CIUnsharpMask", style: .default, handler: setFilter))
    ac.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "CIVignette", style: .default, handler: setFilter))
    ac.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "Cancel", style: .cancel, handler: nil))
        

Accessing the ac.title property only access the AlertController title property.

Looking into the Apple documentation, it looks like I may need to use something like

var title: String? { get }

However I'm not familiar on how to use this syntax.

Answer 1

The syntax in the documentation shows you how the title property is declared, not how you would refer to it in your code (though it can give some insights).

Since it is a property, you can access it via the dot notation .title if you have an instance of UIAlertAction. Luckily, you do have access to the selected instance of UIAlertAction: the parameter passed to the handler function!

In the handler of the alert action, i.e. setFilter, you can access its parameter's .title. This will be the selected action's title.

func setFilter(_ action: UIAlertAction) {
    let selectedActionTitle = action.title
    ...
}