Question

I have a little bit of deserialisation using JSONKit. It is working, but what I have written feels pretty clunky. Can anyone suggest some improvements please 🙂

    //call web service with url and staff id
    NSString *result = [MobileAppDelegate webServiceExecuteGetSingleWithId:StaffId
    atUrl:@"XXXXXXXX"];

    //create NSDictionary from JSON return type
    NSDictionary *items = [result objectFromJSONString];

    NSArray *ar = (NSArray*)[items objectForKey:@"SummaryJsonResult"];

    for(int i = 0; i < [ar count]; i++){
        NSDictionary *tmpDict = (NSDictionary*)[ar objectAtIndex:i];
        AlertItem *tmpItem = [[AlertItem alloc] init];
        tmpItem.Description = [tmpDict objectForKey:@"Description"];
        tmpItem.NumItems = [tmpDict objectForKey:@"ItemCount"];
        tmpItem.ModuleGroup = [tmpDict objectForKey:@"ModuleGroup"];
        tmpItem.StaffID = [tmpDict objectForKey:@"StaffID"];
        tmpItem.status - [tmpDict  objectForKey:@"Status"];
        [array addObject: tmpItem];
        [tmpItem release];
    }

Answer 1

That’s essentially how you have to do it. You can clean things up a little bit:

Use a for-in loop:

for (NSDictionary *tmpDict in [items objectForKey:@"SummaryJsonResult"]) {
    ...

Refactor creating an AlertItem from the dictionary into a factory method:

+ (AlertItem *)alertItemWithDictionary:(NSDictionary *)dict {
    AlertItem *item = [[self alloc] init];
    ...do the same stuff you do in the loop
    return [item autorelease];
}

... then in the loop you just do:
[array addObject:[AlertItem alertItemWithDictionary:tempDict]];