Question

This is kinda confusing so please bear with me.

I have an array (listOfStates) of dictionaries. Where listOfStates has this structure:

{stateName} - {stateCapital}
{Alabama} - {Montgomery}
{Alaska} - {Juneau}
{Arizona} - {Phoenix}
...
{West Virginia} - {Charleston}
{Wisconsin} - {Madison}
{Wyoming} - {Cheyenne}

This is the code used to obtain the 1st letter of each US State(stateName) in order to group them together alphabetically:

listOfStates = [[NSArray alloc] init];  
stateIndex = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
NSMutableArray *tempArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

for (NSDictionary *row in listOfStates) {
    [tempArray addObject:[row valueForKey:@"stateName"]];

     for (int i=0; i<[tempArray count]-1; i++){
     char alphabet = [[tempArray objectAtIndex:i] characterAtIndex:0];
     NSString *uniChar = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%C", alphabet];
         if (![stateIndex containsObject:uniChar]){  
             [stateIndex addObject:uniChar];
         }
     }
}

That code works beautifully, however I’m having issues understanding how to populate a tableview cell with BOTH the @”stateName” and @”stateCapital”(as the subtitle) after I use NSPredicate to sort the array.

-(UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";

UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
if (cell == nil) {
    cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleSubtitle reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
}
    //---get the letter in the current section---
NSString *alphabet = [stateIndex objectAtIndex:[indexPath section]];

    //---get all states beginning with the letter---
NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF beginswith[c] %@", alphabet];
NSArray *states = [[listOfStates valueForKey:@"stateName"] filteredArrayUsingPredicate:predicate];

        //---extract the relevant state from the states object---
    cell.textLabel.text = [states objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
        //cell.textLabel.text = [[listOfStates objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] objectForKey:@"stateName"];
        //cell.detailTextLabel.text = [[listOfStates objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] objectForKey:@"stateCapital"];

return cell;
}

Any help is appreciated and I am more than willing to send the entire project, if you think it’ll help you understand.

Thank you so much.

Answer 1

Maybe change the data structure so you have one dictionary with state name as a key and state capital as a value. That way you can sort your keys and get the value using the keys, not indexes.