Home/ Questions/Q 6600351
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-25T18:36:40+00:00

I’m creating an XML document from an array of NSDictionarys as follows: for (NSDictionary

  • 0

I’m creating an XML document from an array of NSDictionarys as follows:

for (NSDictionary *info in sorted) 
{
    NSArray *item = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: 
        [NSXMLElement elementWithName: @"name" stringValue: [info objectForKey: @"Name"]],                  
        [NSXMLElement elementWithName: @"year" stringValue: [info objectForKey: @"Year"]],                  
                          nil];

         node = [NSXMLElement elementWithName: @"item" children: item attributes:nil];
         [root addChild:node];
}   
NSData *xmlData = [xmlDoc XMLDataWithOptions:NSXMLNodePrettyPrint];

I then write out the NSData object. That all works fine.

The problem is that the values for the “year” entity are being converted to scientific notation. That is, if the original string in the info dictionary is “1998”, what ends up in the XML file is:

    <year>1.998E3</year>

I tried putting quotes around the string when adding the element, but then I get quotes in the output XML:

    <year>"1998"</year>

Any ideas?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Apple’s documentation for setObjectValue in NSXMLNode is suggestive:

    Note: Prior to Mac OS X v 10.6 setObjectValue: would improperly and inconsistently format objects that were NSNumber instances. Applications linked on Mac OS X 10.6 or later will use correct scientific notation for all NSNumbers passed to setObjectValue:.
    If you require a particular format for any value in your XML document, you should format the data yourself as a string and then use setStringValue: to set the value. This guarantees that the text generated is in a format you control directly.

    • 0