Associated Types Trouble

The classic example of associated types trouble certainly is the following Swift error message:

protocol 'Bookmarkable' can only be used as a generic constraint because it has Self 
or associated type requirements
var bookmarks: [Bookmarkable]

This happens once your type conforms to a protocol which conforms to Equatable:

protocol Bookmarkable: Equatable {

}



struct User {

     var bookmarks: [Bookmarkable]

}

Here, the problem is that Equatable contains a method == which has two paramters of type Self. Protocol Methods with Self parameters automatically opt in to associated types.

Let's investigate several patterns that allow you to work your way around the associated type requirement or that show how such a type can be handled.