Question

I have the following format in my plist:

I’m using this code which works fine to pull all muscleName and set them as the table’s cell’s textLabel:

    NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle]pathForResource:@"data" ofType:@"plist"];
    NSMutableArray *rootLevel = [[NSMutableArray alloc]initWithContentsOfFile:path];
    self.muscleArray = rootLevel;
    cell.textLabel.text = [[self.muscleArray objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]objectForKey:@"muscleName"];

But now I’m adding a search bar, and I want the results to show the exerciseName with corresponding muscleName and musclePicture keys.

I tried just doing [[self.muscleArray objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]objectForKey:@"exerciseName"]; but that doesn’t fetch anything

Answer 1

[[self.muscleArray objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]objectForKey:@"exercises"] 

Will give you an NSArray holding two dictionaries (from the data above), each dictionary holding a string for the key exerciseName. You can also do

[[[self.muscleArray objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]objectForKey:@"exercises"] valueForKey:@"exerciseName"]

Which will return you an NSArray of NSStrings holding the two exercise names.

Your data isn’t really laid out in a way that facilitates a nice search. You are trying to search within a dictionary contained within an array contained within a dictionary contained within an array! It might be worth creating an alternate array for search purposes – that would be done something like this:

NSMutableArray *arrayForSearching = [NSMutableArray array];
for (NSDictionary *muscleDict in self.muscleArray)
    for (NSDictionary *excerciseDict in [muscleDict objectForKey:@"exercises"])
        [arrayForSearching addObject:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithValuesAndKeys:
            [exerciseDict objectForKey:@"exerciseName"],@"exerciseName",
            [muscleDict objectForKey:@"muscleName"],@"muscleName",nil]];

(typed in browser and untested, so please forgive any errors!)