JSON Response to NSArray for Output to UITableView

Question

Lots has been written about this topic and I seem to be following exactly as the documentation indicates, but something is clearly a bit off. I'm thinking the issue is with the JSON.

Trying to take a JSON response, which looks like this:

JSON RESPONSE FROM NSLOG: 
{
  0 = "{\"name\":\"Dinner\", \"date\":\"2014-05-23\", \"time\":\"7:00PM\"}";
}

Convert it to an NSArray, like this:

NSString *url = @"http://localhost:8888/rendezvous/index.php/get_events";    
dispatch_async(kBgQueue, ^{
    NSURL *request=[NSURL URLWithString:url];
    NSData* data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL: request];
    dispatch_sync(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
        NSError* error;
        NSDictionary* json = [NSJSONSerialization
                         JSONObjectWithData:data
                         
                         options:kNilOptions
                         error:&error];
        
        _events = [[json valueForKey:@"0"] valueForKey:@"name"];

And output it to a tableViewCell like so:

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    
    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"EventCell";
    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier forIndexPath:indexPath];
    
    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleSubtitle reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
        cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;
    }
    
    cell.textLabel.text = [_events objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
    
    return cell;
}

Presently, I'm getting null for the events array, presumably due to unfamiliarity on how to work with and access this bizarre-looking JSON response. How can I get on the right track here?

Answer 1

Your JSON is invalid...

0 = "{\"name\":Dinner, \"date\":\"2014-05-23\", \"time\":\"7:00PM\"}";

should be

{
    "0" : {
        "time" : "7:00PM",
        "name" : "dinner",
        "date" : "2014-05-23"
    }
}

Fix that, and your NSJSONSerialization call will work properly...

This code works:

NSString *inputJson = @"{\"0\":{\"time\":\"7:00PM\",\"name\":\"dinner\",\"date\":\"2014-05-23\"}}";

NSData * inputJsonData = [inputJson dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

NSDictionary *jsonDict = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:inputJsonData
                                                         options:kNilOptions
                                                           error:nil];


NSDictionary * zeroDict = [jsonDict objectForKey:@"0"];
NSString * nameValue = [zeroDict objectForKey:@"name"];

Update:

I've also just noticed that you're trying to assign what is an NSString, into your _events array. That's not going to work, what you need to do is create a JSON array of events like this...

{
    "events" : [
        {
            "date" : "2014-05-23",
            "name" : "dinner",
            "time" : "7:00PM"
        },
        {
            "date" : "2014-05-26",
            "name" : "lunch",
            "time" : "12:00PM"
        }
    ]
}

Then you can pull out the events array in JSON...

_events = [jsonDict objectForKey:@"events"];

Then _events will be populated with an array of NSDictionary objects and in your table view method you can do the following...

NSDictionary * currentEvent = _events[indexPath.row];

cell.textLabel.text = [currentEvent valueForKey:@"name"];