Question

I have an NSDictionary filled with data. If this was php it might be accessed by  something like:

$data = $array['all_items'][0]['name'];

How do I do something similar in objective c? ($array would be an NSDictionary)

Answer 1

The equivalent code in Objective-C is:

id data = [[[array objectForKey:@"all_items"] objectAtIndex:0] objectForKey:@"name"];

Note that objectForKey: is a method of NSDictionary, and objectAtIndex: is a method of NSArray.

A shortcut in Xcode 4.5, using LLVM 4.1, is:

id data = array[@"all_items"][0][@"name"];

Also note that if “array” is an NSDictionary instance and you want to get an array of all values in the dictionary, you use the allValues method of NSDictionary:

id data = [array allValues][0][@"name"];

Of course, allValues returns an unsorted array, so accessing the array by index is not very useful. More typically, you’d see:

for (NSDictionary* value in [array allValues])
{
    id data = value[@"name"];
    // do something with data
}