If you are trying to save the game state for a number of players, you may be going about it the wrong way. I don't want to stand in the way of your current progress, but I would like to point out some avenues for improvement.
First point: NSDictionary objects (and plists, for that matter) can store data in a tree structure, so there is no need to have a different set of keys for each user:
NSDictionary* dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"currentGame", @"currentGameType", ..., nil],
@"player1",
[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"currentGame", @"currentGameType", ..., nil],
@"player2",
..., nil];
Second point: Taking this one step further, I think what you really want is another complete dictionary for each player:
NSMutableDictionary * playerInfo;
playerInfo = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithCapcity:0];
[playerInfo setObject:@"1" forKey:@"currentGame"];
[playerInfo setObject:@"2" forKey:@"currentGameType"];
[playerInfo setObject:@"what's up?" forKey:@"currentGameQuestion"];
...
NSMutableDictionary * allPlayers;
allPlayers = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithCapcity:0];
NSInteger playerNum;
for (playerNum = 1; playerNum <= 6; playerNum++) {
NSString * key = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Player%d", playerNum];
[allPlayers setObject:playerInfo forKey:key];
}
Now, after saving and reading the allPlayers dictionary, you would access a single record as follows:
NSDictionary * player2Info = [readDict objectForKey:@"player2"];
NSLog(@"%@", player2Info); // show all keys and values for player 2
NSLog(@"%@", [player2Info valueForKey:@"currentGame"]; // show a single value
Third point: If you are storing a game state for several users, the proper way to do it (from an OO point of view) is to create a Player class and then load and save instances of this class. At a glance, it would look like this:
@interface Player {
NSString * currentGame;
NSString * currentGameType;
NSString * currentGameQuestion;
...
}
@property (nonatomic, copy) NSString * currentGame;
@property (nonatomic, copy) NSString * currentGameType;
@property (nonatomic, copy) NSString * currentGameQuestion;
...
- (void)loadFromDictionary:(NSDictionary *)dict;
- (NSDictionary *)saveAsDictionary;
@end
@implementation Player
@synthesize currentGame;
@synthesize currentGameType;
@synthesize currentGameQuestion;
...
- (void)loadFromDictionary:(NSDictionary *)dict {
[self setCurrentGame:[dict objectForKey:@"currentGame"]];
[self setCurrentGameType:[dict objectForKey:@"currentGameType"]];
[self setCurrentGameQuestion:[dict objectForKey:@"currentGameQuestion"]];
...
}
- (NSDictionary *)saveAsDictionary {
return [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
currentGame, @"currentGame";
currentGameType, @"currentGameType";
currentGameQuestion, @"currentGameQuestion";
...
nil];
}
@end
Now, you can load and save players as follows:
Player * player1 = [[[Player alloc] init] autorelease];
Player * player2 = [[[Player alloc] init] autorelease];
...
NSDictionary * players = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
[player1 saveAsDictionary], @"Player1",
[player2 saveAsDictionary], @"Player2",
...
nil];
// save dictionary
[players writeToFile:...
// load dictionary
NSDictionary * readDict = ...
[player1 loadFromDictionary:[readDict objectForKey:@"Player1"]];
[player2 loadFromDictionary:[readDict objectForKey:@"Player2"]];
...
See also:
Nested arrays in Objective-C ( NSMutableArray ) (player objects)
What's the best way to store and retrieve multi-dimensional NSMutableArrays? (property list serialization)
