Swift 3 & 4

Swift 3, and now Swift 4, have replaced many “stringly-typed” APIs with struct “wrapper types”, as is the case with NotificationCenter. Notifications are now identified by a struct Notfication.Name rather than by String. For more details see the now legacy Migrating to Swift 3 guide

Swift 2.2 usage:

// Define identifier
let notificationIdentifier: String = "NotificationIdentifier"

// Register to receive notification
NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self, selector: #selector(YourClassName.methodOfReceivedNotification(_:)), name: notificationIdentifier, object: nil)

// Post a notification
NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().postNotificationName(notificationIdentifier, object: nil)

Swift 3 & 4 usage:

// Define identifier
let notificationName = Notification.Name("NotificationIdentifier")

// Register to receive notification
NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(YourClassName.methodOfReceivedNotification), name: notificationName, object: nil)

// Post notification
NotificationCenter.default.post(name: notificationName, object: nil)

// Stop listening notification
NotificationCenter.default.removeObserver(self, name: notificationName, object: nil)

All of the system notification types are now defined as static constants on Notification.Name; i.e. .UIApplicationDidFinishLaunching, .UITextFieldTextDidChange, etc.

You can extend Notification.Name with your own custom notifications in order to stay consistent with the system notifications:

// Definition:
extension Notification.Name {
    static let yourCustomNotificationName = Notification.Name("yourCustomNotificationName")
}

// Usage:
NotificationCenter.default.post(name: .yourCustomNotificationName, object: nil)

Swift 4.2 usage:

Same as Swift 4, except now system notifications names are part of UIApplication. So in order to stay consistent with the system notifications you can extend UIApplication with your own custom notifications instead of Notification.Name :

// Definition:
UIApplication {
    public static let yourCustomNotificationName = Notification.Name("yourCustomNotificationName")
}

// Usage:
NotificationCenter.default.post(name: UIApplication.yourCustomNotificationName, object: nil)