Question

I have a JSON structure like this:

{
  id:100
  contactInfo: {
    name: John Doe
    city: New York
  }
}

and a corresponding Customer class w/ the following properties including a nested contactInfo class.

Customer.id
Customer.contactInfo.name
Customer.contactInfo.city

Is it possible to convert the JSON data directly to an instance of the Customer class?

I know how to get an NSDictionary object, but that is very cumbersome and verbose to work with and would rather convert/deserialize the data directly to the Customer class.

EDITED w/ Additional Info:

In other languages I have worked with there is built-in support for deserialization of JSON to custom objects. All you have to do is mark the class as “Serializable” and the JSON is deserialized w/o the need to write custom code in each class.

The NSDictionary object can become very cumbersome if the class has nested classes. It would be much easier to use the custom object properties like this

Customer.contactInfo.name

rather than

[(NSDictionary*)[customerDict objectForKey:@"contactInfo"] objectForKey:@"name"]

thus my question about a standard built-in deserializer in Objective-C.

Answer 1

As of iOS5 there if official support for JSON
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Foundation/Reference/NSJSONSerialization_Class/Reference/Reference.html