Here is a simple but complete example derived from jckarter's answer.
It shows how to add a new property to an existing class. It does it by defining a computed property in an extension block. The computed property is stored as an associated object:
import ObjectiveC
// Declare a global var to produce a unique address as the assoc object handle
private var AssociatedObjectHandle: UInt8 = 0
extension MyClass {
var stringProperty:String {
get {
return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, &AssociatedObjectHandle) as! String
}
set {
objc_setAssociatedObject(self, &AssociatedObjectHandle, newValue, objc_AssociationPolicy.OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN_NONATOMIC)
}
}
}
EDIT:
If you need to support getting the value of an uninitialized property and to avoid getting the error unexpectedly found nil while unwrapping an Optional value, you can modify the getter like this:
get {
return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, &AssociatedObjectHandle) as? String ?? ""
}
Update in Swift 3.0
For example this is a UITextField
import Foundation
import UIKit
import ObjectiveC
// Declare a global var to produce a unique address as the assoc object handle
var AssociatedObjectHandle: UInt8 = 0
extension UITextField
{
var nextTextField:UITextField {
get {
return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, &AssociatedObjectHandle) as! UITextField
}
set {
objc_setAssociatedObject(self, &AssociatedObjectHandle, newValue, .OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN_NONATOMIC)
}
}
}
// Utils-tags.swift
// Just a "dumb Swift trick" to add a string tag to a view controller.
// For example, with UIDocumentPickerViewController you need to know
// "which button was clicked to launch a picker"
import UIKit
private var _docPicAssociationKey: UInt8 = 0
extension UIDocumentPickerViewController {
public var tag: String {
get {
return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, &_docPicAssociationKey)
as? String ?? ""
}
set(newValue) {
objc_setAssociatedObject(self, &_docPicAssociationKey,
newValue, .OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN)
}
}
}