I have a dictionary which i convert to a string to store it in a database.
var Dictionary =
[
"Example 1" : "1",
"Example 2" : "2",
"Example 3" : "3"
]
And i use the
Dictionary.description
to get the string.
I can store this in a database perfectly but when i read it back, obviously its a string.
"[Example 2: 2, Example 3: 3, Example 1: 1]"
I want to convert it back to i can assess it like
Dictionary["Example 2"]
How do i go about doing that?
Thanks
What the description
text is isn't guaranteed to be stable across SDK versions so I wouldn't rely on it.
Your best bet is to use JSON as the intermediate format with NSJSONSerialization. Convert from dictionary to JSON string and back.
I created a static function in a string helper class which you can then call.
static func convertStringToDictionary(json: String) -> [String: AnyObject]? {
if let data = json.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding) {
var error: NSError?
let json = NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData(data, options: NSJSONReadingOptions.allZeros, error: &error) as? [String: AnyObject]
if let error = error {
println(error)
}
return json
}
return nil
}
Then you can call it like this
if let dict = StringHelper.convertStringToDictionary(string) {
//do something with dict
}
this is exactly what I am doing right now. Considering @gregheo saying "description.text is not guaranteed to be stable across SKD version" description.text could change in format-writing so its not very wise to rely on.
I believe this is the standard of doing it
let data = your dictionary
let thisJSON = try NSJSONSerialization.dataWithJSONObject(data, options: .PrettyPrinted)
let datastring:String = String(data: thisJSON, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding)!
you can save the datastring to coredata.