Question

Using the Graph Facebook API with this code

[facebook requestWithGraphPath:@"me/friends" andDelegate:self]; 

Now I have an NSDictionary which is like this:

{data =     (
            {
        id = 123456;
        name = "Mark Zuckerberg";
    },
            {
        id = 654321;
        name = "Steve Jobs";
    },
            {
        id = 13579;
        name = "Bill Gates";
    }
    ...
  );
}

I want to sort this NSDictionary, but I know that is not possible.
Of course, I can create 2 NSArray (or NSMutableArray), one “array_id” and the other one “array_name”.
I’d like to sort “array_name”, but keeping the reference to the id.

For example, if my two arrays are something like this:

array_name = {"Mark", "Steve", "Bill};
array_id   = {"123456", "654321", "13579"};

I want, at the end, something like this:

array_name = {"Bill", "Mark", "Steve"};
array_id   = {"13579", "123456", "654321"};

What do you suggest me? Thanks!

Answer 1

It doesn’t look like you want to sort an NSDictionary, you want to sort an NSArray of NSDictionary objects that just so happens to itself be in an NSDictionary. You can simply extract this friends array as follows:

NSArray *unsortedFriends = [dictionaryFromFacebook objectForKey:@"data"];

Now you can do the following:

NSSortDescriptor *descriptor = [NSSortDescriptor sortDescriptorWithKey:@"name" ascending:YES];
NSArray *sortedFriends = [unsortedFriends sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:[NSArray arrayWithObject:descriptor]];