Create time intervals with explicit units

In Swift, many APIs take a TimeInterval instead of just a Double, you need to know they are in seconds. Instead we can add functions that provide them with explicit units and allow us to convert them. It makes for a really readable call site!

extension TimeInterval {
   // Hide the calculations from the call site
   private static var secondsPerHour: Double { return 60 * 60 }
   private static var secondsPerMinute: Double { return 60 }

   // Functions to provide time intervals with explicit units
   static func hours(_ value: Double) -> TimeInterval {
      value * secondsPerHour
   }

   static func minutes(_ value: Double) -> TimeInterval {
      value * secondsPerMinute
   }

   static func seconds(_ value: Double) -> TimeInterval {
      value
   }
}

// They make very readable call sites
TimeInterval.hours(3)
TimeInterval.minutes(46)
TimeInterval.seconds(35)

I hope the article was useful. If you have any feedback or questions please feel free to reach out.

Thanks for reading!