I'm debugging a library that implements a UIScrollViewDelegate proxy (essentially) like:

class ScrollViewDelegateProxy: NSObject, UIScrollViewDelegate {
    private weak var realDelegate: UIScrollViewDelegate?

    init(scrollView: UIScrollView) {
        super.init()
        self.realDelegate = scrollView.delegate
        scrollView.delegate = self
    }

    // MARK: - UIScrollViewDelegate

    func scrollViewDidScroll(_ scrollView: UIScrollView) {
        // Do something...
        realDelegate?.scrollViewDidScroll?(scrollView)
    }

    // Other scroll delegate methods...

    // MARK: - Method Forwarding

    override func responds(to aSelector: Selector!) -> Bool {
        if let realDelegate {
            realDelegate.responds(to: aSelector)
        } else {
            super.responds(to: aSelector)
        }
    }

    override func forwardingTarget(for aSelector: Selector!) -> Any? {
        if let realDelegate, realDelegate.responds(to: aSelector) {
            realDelegate
        } else {
            super.forwardingTarget(for: aSelector)
        }
    }
}

The method forwarding is implemented in case the proxy is sent messages outside of UIScrollViewDelegate. E.g. if the scrollView were a UITableView, then the delegate property would be a UITableViewDelegate with more methods that are not supported by this proxy. In that case, it should just pass it on.

Because my use case is a UITableView. I've found that this can crash (not always) with the error message:

'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[SomeLibrary.ScrollViewDelegateProxy tableView:viewForHeaderInSection:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance'

I think this is because:

• responds(to:) returns true for a selector while the realDelegate is in memory
• realDelegate deallocates
• forwardingTarget(for:) is called later with that selector, but it is not implemented on the proxy
• The invocation causes a crash

I saw this blog post but wasn't sure what the Swift equivalent was.

Is using a weak property like this with method forwarding simply unsafe? And what might a safe implementation look like?