Obj-C: Convert an Array of objects into an NSDictionary for use with JSONRepresentation

Question

I have an NSMutableArray of custom objects with various information them. For instance the object might contain:

firstname
lastname
email

I'd like to be able to add these objects to an NSDictionary, so that I can call SBJSON's 'JSONRepresentation' Function, and the final JSON format would look like:

{
    "Users" : [
               { "user1First" : "FirstName",
                 "user1Last"  : "LastName",
                 "user1Email" : "Email" },
               { "user2First" : "FirstName",
                 "user2Last"  : "LastName",
                 "user2Email" : "Email" },
               { "user3First" : "FirstName",
                 "user3Last"  : "LastName",
                 "user3Email" : "Email" }
               ]
}

I think you should clarify this question a bit more. Are you trying to generate a number of users with the same values as "FirstName" etc? I don't understand well enough to help. — Nicolas Renold, Aug 20 '11 at 00:32
"FirstName", "LastName" and "Email" are the keys for the JSON Values. — Adam Johnson, Aug 20 '11 at 01:42

adamrothman · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-22T17:14:34.437

3

Write a dictionaryRepresentation for each of your custom classes that returns a dictionary for that particular object. Then you can do something like this:

NSMutableArray *dictionaryArray = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:yourOtherArray.count];
for (id object in yourOtherArray) {
    [dictionaryArray addObject:[object dictionaryRepresentation]];
}
// not sure what SBJSON's function returns so I'm using id here
id JSONRepresentation = [dictionaryArray JSONRepresentation];

edited Aug 22 '11 at 17:14

answered Aug 20 '11 at 00:34

adamrothman

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Instead of `NSObject *object`, I would use `id object`. That will prevent a warning. – Rudy Velthuis Aug 20 '11 at 00:53
Good idea. Edited to reflect. – adamrothman Aug 22 '11 at 17:14
`dictionaryRepresentation` iOS6 and above – Almas Adilbek Feb 16 '13 at 21:22

Obj-C: Convert an Array of objects into an NSDictionary for use with JSONRepresentation

1 Answers1