I want to pass data returned from a soap / xml service to my custom object array. I am not sure if the data I converted to string below is an xml, json or string?
How can I pass the data of cityID and cityName here to my custom city array with cityID and cityName members?
Regards,
That looks like some JSON embedded in XML:) Just get rid of XML stuff and the rest could be simply decoded via JSONDecoder.
The response data was not JSON but JSON embedded in XML, so I first converted the response data to text and removed the HTML tags with below String extension, then I converted that text to json.
extension String{
var removeHTMLTags : String{
return self.replacingOccurrences(of: "<[^>]+>", with: "", options: .regularExpression, range: nil)
}
Related
First off, what do we call a dictionary with a format like this in iOS?
(
{
name = "Apple";
value = "fruit-1";
},
{
name = "Banana";
value = "fruit-2";
}
)
And for my main question. I somehow need to format a string of JSON, like this:
[{"name":"Apple","value":"fruit-1"},{"name":"Banana","value":"fruit-2"}]
into whatever that format is called (of the string above).
For context, the existing approach of my project uses CoreData where the Server response (which uses the mystery format above) gets saved locally as a String, and I want to follow that format.
EDIT: for more context, I really need to just get the first format into the database because a module of a project was built to read the data with that format (e.g. make use of NSString.propertyList()).
Using a library called ios hierarchy viewer, I can see the saved object in the device.
Original format, server json to db (core data) in Objective-C:
What I've been trying to do in Swift, server json to local using JSONSerialization:
First off, what do we call a dictionary with a format like this in iOS?
According to the documentation of NSString.propertyList(), that's a "text representation of a property list".
It's a wonky, non-standard pretty-printing obtained by calling NSArray.description or NSDictionary.description.
Here's an example that shows a round-trip of data:
// The opening `{` indentation is fucky, but that's how it's generated.
let inputPropertyList = """
(
{
name = "Apple";
value = "fruit-1";
},
{
name = "Banana";
value = "fruit-2";
}
)
"""
// The result is an `Any` because we don't know if the root structure
// of the property list is an array or a dictionary
let deserialized: Any = inputPropertyList.propertyList()
// If you want the description in the same format, you need to cast to
// Foundation.NSArray or Foundation.NSDictionary.
// Swift.Array and Swift.Dictionary have a different description format.
let nsDict = deserialized as! NSArray
let roundTrippedPropertyList = nsDict.description
print(roundTrippedPropertyList)
assert(roundTrippedPropertyList == inputPropertyList)
The second format you show is what you get when you display an object in the debug console. That's the output of the object's description property. It isn't a "JSON string", exactly.
If you want to convert your objets to a true JSON string, see below.
As Alexander pointed out, the first string in your question is the output from NSString's propertyList() function. The format looks quite similar to "pretty-printed" JSON, but it's different enough that it it won't work that way.
The `propertyList() function is a debugging-only function, and I don't know of an existing way to parse that back into objects. If that is the string that's being sent by your server, your server is broken. If that's what you see in core data when you log the contents of a field, it's probably a misunderstanding on your part.
To convert an object to pretty JSON, see this answer, where I created an extension to the Encodable format that implements a property "prettyJSON":
extension Encodable {
var prettyJSON: String {
let encoder = JSONEncoder()
encoder.outputFormatting = .prettyPrinted
guard let data = try? encoder.encode(self),
let output = String(data: data, encoding: .utf8)
else { return "Error converting \(self) to JSON string" }
return output
}
}
That should work for any object that supports the Encodable protocol. (And your object should.)
I am able to retrieve JSON from a service using RESTAssured.
I would like to use the JSONPath capability to extract JSON and then compare it using JSONAssert.
Here's my example:
#Test
public void doAPITestExample() throws JSONException {
// retrieve JSON from service
Response response = RestAssured.given().get("http://localhost:8081/mockservice");
response.then().assertThat().statusCode(200);
String body = response.getBody().asString();
System.out.println("Body:" + body);
/*
{"datetime": "2018-06-21 17:48:07.488384", "data": [{"foo": "bar"}, {"test": "this is test data"}]}
*/
// able to compare entire body with JSONAssert, strict=false
Object data = response.then().extract().path("data");
System.out.println("Response data:");
System.out.println(data.getClass()); // class java.util.ArrayList
System.out.println(data.toString());
// JSONAssert data with strict=false
String expectedJSON = "{\"data\":[{\"foo\": \"bar\"}, {\"test\": \"this is test data\"}]}";
JSONAssert.assertEquals(expectedJSON, response.getBody().asString(), false);
// How do I extract JSON with JSONPath, use JSONAssert together?
}
Approach 1 - using JSONPath to get JSONObject
How do I get JSONPath to return a JSONObject that can be used by JSONAssert?
In the code example:
Object data = response.then().extract().path("data");
This returns a java.util.ArrayList. How can this be used with JSONAssert to compare to expected JSON?
Approach 2 - parse extracted data with JSONParser
If I do data.toString(), this returns a string that cannot be parsed due to lack of quote handling for string values with spaces strings:
String dataString = response.then().extract().path("data").toString();
JSONArray dataArray = (JSONArray) JSONParser.parseJSON(dataString);
Result:
org.json.JSONException: Unterminated object at character 24 of [{foo=bar}, {test=this is test data}]
Approach 3 - Using JSON schema validation
Is is possible to extract just the data property from the JSON and run that against JSON Schema on just that part?
Note: the entire JSON that is returned is quite large. I just want to validate the data property from it.
What would an example of doing a JSON schema validation look for just the data property from the JSON?
Thanks;
You can use the method jsonPath in your response object.
Example:
// this will return bar as per your example response.
String foo = response.jsonPath ().getString ("data[0].foo");
For more info about JSon path check here.
Let's say there's a JSON-string I got from server: "\"3\"" (with quotes, i.e. length == 3 here)
In Android-world, I can do:
gson.fromJson(json, new TypeToken<String>() {}.getType()); - it returns "3" (i.e. length == 1)
In C#-world, can use NewtonSoft.Json:
JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<string>(json, settings) - it returns "3" (i.e. length == 1)
And other way around, I do have string I want to serialize as a JSON.
In Android I'd do gson.toJson("\"3\"") and in C# - JsonConvert.SerializeObject("\"3\"")
The problem with JSONSerialization is that it doesn't treat plain string as a valid JSON: JSONSerialization.isValidJSONObject("\"3\"") == *false*
What would be equivalent in Swift / Obj-C world?
The ugly workaround I've found (except of just adding/removing quotes) so far is to wrap string into 1-item-array to make JSONSerialization happy and then remove "[","]" from resulted JSON-string (and other way around - add "[", "]" before deserialization), but it's a way too disgusting to be the real solution for this problem.
When de-serializing JSON which does not have an array or
dictionary as top-level object you can pass the
.allowFragments option:
let jsonString = "\"3\""
let jsonData = jsonString.data(using: .utf8)!
let json = try! JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: jsonData, options: .allowFragments)
if let str = json as? String {
print(str) // 3
}
However, there seems to be no way to serialize a plain string to JSON
with the JSONSerialization class from the Foundation library.
Note that according to the JSON specification,
a JSON object is a collection of name/value pairs (dictionary) or
an ordered list of values (array). A single string is not a valid
JSON object.
I have recieved a response object (res) in swift from REST API. It is of type. __NSArrayM. It contains a JSON format string which I want to parse.
{ JsonResult = "[ { \"IsAuth\":\"true\" } ]"; }
It is a long JSON String and I have shortened it for simplicity.
To parse a json, the object needs to be of type Dictionary but I can't cast the object of type __NSArrayM into it.
I searched a lot but can't figure out anyway to read this JSON string.
Additional: Whichever object I try to cast the response object. I get the error -
Could not cast value of type '__NSArrayM' (0x107e86c30) to 'NSData' (0x107e86168) or whichever data type I cast into.
Let's do this step by step.
You say you have an object named "res" which is of type __NSArrayM and which contains this thing:
{ JsonResult = "[ { \"IsAuth\":\"true\" } ]"; }
It means that you already have converted the JSON to an object, namely an NSArray.
In this array that we don't see, this thing you're showing us is a dictionary (that we will name "dict") with its value being a String which itself represents another JSON object.
Let's get the value using the key:
if let value = dict["JsonResult"] as? String {
print(value)
}
Now "value" is supposed to be "[ { \"IsAuth\":\"true\" } ]".
This is a String which represents JSON. To decode the JSON, we first have to make the string into data then we can decode:
if let data = value.data(using: .utf8) {
if let content = try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data, options: []),
let array = content as? [[String: Any]]
{
print(array)
}
}
I am using the VK SDK for iOS, and I need to take out the images URLs from JSON response from VK.
The response is look like this:
The actual response could be AnyObject OR String, and I only need the largest image URL (photo_1280) as string.
In the response comes 1-10 photos and which parameters I will need to change to get the particular photo like first or second and so on.
I'm using Swift in my project but can understand Objective-C.
JSON is just a format that lets you exchange information between languages (or objects).
You need to 'parse' the string into a JSON object. Its a little different for each language. For example on iOS I create my UI elements from a JSON file where I load the file and create a dictionary object from it. In your case you are doing it from a string. You need to turn that string into a valid object in your language. In Swift I prefer a Dictionary. So I use a typealias for that and cast the nsDictionary as that type of object.
Then to access objects, I access keys in the dictionary. In your case you would create a dictionary object too, and access the "attachments" object, which in your case is an array so you'll need to do extra processing on it to get each image (i.e. go through the array). This should get you going.
typealias Dict = Dictionary<String,AnyObject>
func loadDictionaryFromJSON(jsonString:String) -> Dict
{
var JSONData:NSData! = jsonString.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)
var JSONError:NSError?
let swiftObject:AnyObject = NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData(JSONData, options: NSJSONReadingOptions.AllowFragments, error: &JSONError)!
if let nsDictionaryObject = swiftObject as? NSDictionary
{
if let dictionaryObject = nsDictionaryObject as Dictionary?
{
return dictionaryObject as Dict
}else
{
println("Error could not make dictionary from NSDictionary in \(self)")
}
}else
{
"Error could not make NSDictionary in \(self)"
}
println("Empty dictionary passed, fix it!")
return Dict()
}
Now to access things you just do
var objects:Dictionary<String,AnyObject> = loadDictionaryFromJSON("{"what":"ever"}")
var whatever = objects["what"]