Question

{
 "success":true,
 "listings":
 {
   "50831582253b4acf09000000":
   {
     "id":"50831582253b4acf09000000",
     "title":"fddfds",
     "assets":[],
     "discussions":[]
   }
 },
 "displaymessage":"1 Listings Found"
}

I am still struggling between dictionaries and arrays. What would make the above an Array?

Thanks

Answer 1

There’s a pretty big difference between dictionaries and arrays. Dictionaries store data entries in relation to a keys you specify on instantiation. For example:

NSDictionary *myDictionary = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjectsAndKeys:@"object1",@"key1",@"object2",@"key2", nil];

This alloc/inits a dictionary and sets “object1” for “key1” and “object2” for “key2”, so then if you wanted to ask for the value of “key1” you could access it with the following.

NSLog(@"%@",[myDictionary objectForKey:@"key1"]);

Objects in a dictionary can be arrays, dictionaries, booleans, data, dates, numbers and strings.

On the other hand, arrays store data by the datas index within the array:

NSArray *myArray = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"object1",@"object2",@"object3", nil];

You can then access the a specific bit of data from within the array by asking for objectAtIndex:, ex:

NSLog(@"%@",[myArray objectAtIndex:1]);

Which will return “object2” because the first index in an array is always “0”.