swift - Cannot use mutating member on immutable value of type

Question

I have following struct:

public protocol SuperModel {
    // empty protocol
}
struct ModelOne: SuperModel {
    struct SubModelOne {
        var someVar: Double
        var othervar: Double?
    }
    var sub: SubModelOne?
    mutating func setSub(sub: SubModelOne) {          
        self.sub = sub
    }
}

In my class, I want to use this struct like that:

final class SomeClass: SuperClass {
    var data: SuperModel
    init() {
        self.data = ModelOne()
    }
    func someFunc() {
        (self.data as! ModelOne).setSub(ModelOne.SubModelOne(someVar: 2, otherVar: 1))
    }
}

I get following error: Cannot use mutating member on immutable value of type 'ModelOne'. Why is that so and how can I fix this?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38764003/cannot-use-mutating-member-on-immutable-value-of-type

Answer 1

When you apply type casting to value types (such structs), if succeed, you receive immutable copy of requested value:

(self.data as! ModelOne) // this is copy of data

The only way (as known to me) how you can mutate values that need to be casted - reassign value (as @Sahil Beri pointed you need declare variable):

func someFunc() {
    if var data = data as? ModelOne {
        data.setSub(ModelOne.SubModelOne(someVar: 2, otherVar: 1))
        self.data = data // you can do this since ModelOne conforms to SuperModel
    }
}