In SwiftUI, Why there is no `body` method for View [duplicate] - swiftui

Question

The View protocol requires a body property:
public protocol View {
associatedtype Body : View
#ViewBuilder var body: Self.Body { get }
}
Why have some built-in Views in SwiftUI no body?
#frozen public struct EmptyView : View {
#inlinable public init()
public typealias Body = Never
}
#frozen public struct VStack<Content> : View where Content : View {
#inlinable public init(alignment: HorizontalAlignment = .center, spacing: CGFloat? = nil, #ViewBuilder content: () -> Content)
public typealias Body = Never
}
have no body at all..
let emptyView = EmptyView().body
// Value of type 'EmptyView' has no member 'body'
let vStackView = VStack { Text("some text")}.body
// Value of type 'VStack<Text>' has no member 'body'
How are these Views implemented?

Answer 1

Each primitive view does have a body, but it isn't directly accessible at compile-time. The official Swift forums have a thread about this topic. I'll reproduce my analysis here.
Let's consider Text.
A Text value has a body property, as all Views do. Text's body calls fatalError:
import SwiftUI
func body<V: View>(of view: V) -> V.Body { view.body }
body(of: Text("hello"))
// runtime output:
SwiftUI/View.swift:94: Fatal error: body() should not be called on Text.
However, if we attempt to access the body property directly, the compiler rejects the program:
import SwiftUI
Text("hello").body
Output:
The compiler rejects the program because SwiftUI's swiftinterface file doesn't declare a body property for Text.
Why doesn't Text's declaration include body? I don't know for sure because I don't have access to the SwiftUI source code, but I have discovered that we can use #_spi to omit a declaration from a .swiftinterface file.
I put the following into MyView.swift:
import SwiftUI
public struct MyView: View {
#_spi(Private)
public var body: Never { fatalError() }
}
Then I compile it as follows, based on the “Directly invoking the compiler” instructions found here:
swiftc MyView.swift -module-name MyLib -emit-module -emit-library -emit-module-interface -enable-library-evolution
The compiler writes MyLib.swiftinterface as follows, omitting the body declaration:
// swift-interface-format-version: 1.0
// swift-compiler-version: Apple Swift version 5.7 (swiftlang-5.7.0.123.7 clang-1400.0.29.50)
// swift-module-flags: -target arm64-apple-macosx12.0 -enable-objc-interop -enable-library-evolution -module-name MyLib
import Swift
import SwiftUI
import _Concurrency
import _StringProcessing
public struct MyView : SwiftUI.View {
public typealias Body = Swift.Never
}
And it writes MyLib.private.swiftinterface as follows, containing the body declaration:
// swift-interface-format-version: 1.0
// swift-compiler-version: Apple Swift version 5.7 (swiftlang-5.7.0.123.7 clang-1400.0.29.50)
// swift-module-flags: -target arm64-apple-macosx12.0 -enable-objc-interop -enable-library-evolution -module-name MyLib
import Swift
import SwiftUI
import _Concurrency
import _StringProcessing
public struct MyView : SwiftUI.View {
#_spi(Private) #_Concurrency.MainActor(unsafe) public var body: Swift.Never {
get
}
public typealias Body = Swift.Never
}
So my best guess is that SwiftUI applies the #_spi attribute to the body property of each primitive View.

Answer 2

I'm not an expert but this seems very logical. Imagine that no views are offered by SwiftUI and you want to create the very first view. This view has the computed property body that is expecting you to a return a type that conforms to the View protocol (i.e. should have the body property). This will go forever. Hence, there has to be a View without the body property.