Question

I am new to objective-c and I am trying to create an array of dictionaries in an effort to view them in a NSTableView with three columns. the sqlite DB schema has three columns as well, “foo”, “bar”, and “foobar” in a table called “tbl1”. i am using FMDB as a wrapper, and i can write and query successfully.

i can create an array for the entire DB with this:

FMResultSet *rs = [db executeQuery:@"select * from tbl1"];

and i can create a dictionary with this:

dict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
[dict setObject: @"baz"        
      forKey: @"foo"];

reading each item in the DB works:

while ([rs next]) {
    NSLog(@"%@, %@, %@", 
          [rs stringForColumn:@"foo"],
          [rs stringForColumn:@"bar"],
          [rs stringForColumn:@"foobar"]);
    }

however, i cannot seem to create a single array of NSMutableDictionaries so I can read them into a cell-based table view. i was able to populate a single column with the identifier “foo” with the values for “foo”, however, that was just by making an array of “foo” items from an SQL query:

FMResultSet *rs = [db executeQuery:@"select * from tbl1"];
    while([foo next]) {
        NSString *thisFoo = [foos stringForColumn:@"foo"];        
        [_foos addObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@", thisFoo]];
    }
    NSLog(@"Foos: %@", _foos);

as a side note, i should be using mutable arrays and mutable dictionaries if i want to update the DB later? or will it not matter, as i would have to query the entire DB to refresh the table view anyway?
any suggestions on how to populate a three column tableview with a three column sqlite DB are appreciated – as well as corrections to my understanding of FMDB or tableviews.

Answer 1

FMResultSet *rs = (FMResultSet*)[db executeQuery:@"select * from tbl1"];
NSMutableArray *totalArray = [[[NSMutableArray alloc]init]autorelease];
while ([rs next]) {
dict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
[dict setObject:[rs stringForColumn:@"foo"] forKey:@"COL1"];
[dict setObject:[rs stringForColumn:@"bar"] forKey:@"COL2"];
[dict setObject:[rs stringForColumn:@"foobar"] forKey:@"COL3"];
[totalArray addObject:dict];
[dict release];
}
return totalArray;

should give you the array of dictionaries