Question

I have one array that is pre-filled with dictionaries with each dictionary consisting of two keys.

{
   name = object1;
   quantity = 5;
},
{ 
   name = object2;
   quantity = 2;
}

I want to be able to add more objects and combine any duplicate dictionaries. So for example, if I added 5 of object one and 3 of object 2, this would be the result.

 {
       name = object1;
       quantity = 10;
 },
 { 
       name = object2;
       quantity = 5;
 }

My ultimate goal is to be able to display the quantity next to the item in a table view. What is the best way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

If you really want to iterate through your existing structure then you could do something like:

for (NSMutableDictionary *dict in ArrayName) {
    if([[dict valueForKey:@"name"] isEqual:someobject]) {
        int oldValue = [[dict valueForKey:@"quantity"] intValue];
        [dict setValue:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d",oldValue+1] forKey:@"quantity"];
    }
}

I assumed you stored the quantity as an NSString, you may have used something else like NSNumber.

I think a better idea is create your own class with two properties, a name and a quantity. Then hold one array of those objects and iterate through that.