I need to use NSPredicate to match two strings, case-insensitive, diacritic insensitive, and whitespace-insensitive.
The predicate would look something like this:
[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"Key ==[cdw] %@", userInputKey];
The 'w' modifier is an invented one to express what I'd like to use.
I can't just trim the userInputKey
because the data-source "Key" values might have whitespaces in them too (they need those whitespaces, I can't just trim them beforehand).
For example, given a userInputKey
"abc" the predicate should match all of
{"abc", "a b c", " a B C "}
and so on. Given a
userInputKey
"a B C" the predicate should also match all the values in the set above.
This can't be so hard to do, can it?
How about defining something like this:
+ (NSPredicate *)myPredicateWithKey:(NSString *)userInputKey {
return [NSPredicate predicateWithBlock:^BOOL(NSString *evaluatedString, NSDictionary *bindings) {
// remove all whitespace from both strings
NSString *strippedString=[[evaluatedString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]] componentsJoinedByString:@""];
NSString *strippedKey=[[userInputKey componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]] componentsJoinedByString:@""];
return [strippedString caseInsensitiveCompare:strippedKey]==NSOrderedSame;
}];
}
Then use it like this:
NSArray *testArray=[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"abc", @"a bc", @"A B C", @"AB", @"a B d", @"A bC", nil];
NSArray *filteredArray=[testArray filteredArrayUsingPredicate:[MyClass myPredicateWithKey:@"a B C"]];
NSLog(@"filteredArray: %@", filteredArray);
The result is:
2012-04-10 13:32:11.978 Untitled 2[49613:707] filteredArray: (
abc,
"a bc",
"A B C",
"A bC"
)
Swift 4:
func ignoreWhiteSpacesPredicate(id: String) -> NSPredicate {
return NSPredicate(block: { (evel, binding) -> Bool in
guard let str = evel as? String else {return false}
let strippedString = str.components(separatedBy: CharacterSet.whitespaces).joined(separator: "")
let strippedKey = id.components(separatedBy: CharacterSet.whitespaces).joined(separator: "")
return strippedString.caseInsensitiveCompare(strippedKey) == ComparisonResult.orderedSame
})
}
Example:
let testArray:NSArray = ["abc", "a bc", "A B C", "AB", "a B d", "A bC"]
let filteredArray = testArray.filtered(using: ignoreWhiteSpacesPredicate(id: "a B C"))
Result:
["abc", "a bc", "A B C", "A bC"]