Downloading image from optional URL in swift

Question

I saw a lot of tutorials with a specific URL to download image but I have optional URL which would come from API and in image downloading function Xcode ask me to force-unwrap which i can't do.

cell.coverView?.image = downloader(StringURLFromAPI)

and in downloader function

func downloader(url: String?) -> UIImage {

    let data = NSData(contentsOfURL: NSURL(string: url))
    return UIImage(data: data)
}

TIA :)

Answer 1

It's better to make your downloader function return optional. It should return UIImage only if the NSURL and NSData objects were successfully created:

func downloader(url: String?) -> UIImage? {
    guard let url = url,
        let imageUrl = NSURL(string: url),
        let data = NSData(contentsOfURL: imageUrl)
        else { return nil }

    return UIImage(data: data)
}

You can also check out this library for downloading images from remote urls: https://github.com/rs/SDWebImage