Question

I have some json coming like the below, which i’m trying to turn into nsdictionaries. My problem is that the 1, 5 and 4 are keys, with unpredictable values. How would I get each object – {“id”:”A”,”name”:”Nike”} – without knowing the key?

// JSON looks like:
{
"shops":
{
"1":{"id":"A","name":"Nike"},
"5":{"id":"G","name":"Apple"}
"4":{"id":"I","name":"Target"}
}
}

// how to step thru this?
NSArray *shopsArray = [[shopsString JSONValue] objectForKey:@"shops"];

Answer 1

The returned object from objectForKey:@"shops" is actually an NSDictionary instance, not an NSArray, since the keys are actually strings, not numeric values.

For your purposes, you can simply call -allValues on the resulting NSDictionary.

NSDictionary *shops = [[shopsString JSONValue] objectForKey:@"shops"];

for(id obj in [shops allValues]) {
  //do stuff with obj...
}

EDIT: If you need ordering of the values, then you can do something like the following:

First, change the incoming JSON to this kind of structure:

{
  "shops":[
      {"key":"1", "id":"A","name":"Nike"},
      {"key":"5","id":"G","name":"Apple"},
      {"key":"4", "id":"I","name":"Target"}
  ]
}

Then, you can have ordering of the objects in the array.

NSArray *shops = [[shopsString JSONValue] objectForKey:@"shops"];
for(NSDictionary *shop in shops) {
  NSString *key = [shop objectForKey:@"key"];
  //...
}