Decode KeyValuePairs<String: Person> from JSON - ios

Question

I have a JSON response that looks something like this:
{
"persons": {
"John": {
"name": "John",
"age": 24
},
"Michael": {
"name": "Michael",
"age": 44
},
"Jack": {
"name": "Jack",
"age": 25
}
}
}
As you can see this could be parse with a struct that looks like this:
struct PersonsResponse: Decodable {
let persons: [String: Person]
}
struct Person: Decodable {
let name: String
let age: Ing
}
However, what this does, is returns a dictionary and parses fine. What I would need is to preserve the order of the persons as they arrive inside this JSON response. I have come across KeyValuePairs in swift which basically are ordered dictionaries but for the love of God I can't figure out how to decode it into being an KeyValuePairs<String, Person>.
Apple documentation says that instantiating a KeyValuePairs object is as easy as doing:
let recordTimes: KeyValuePairs = ["Florence Griffith-Joyner": 10.49,
"Evelyn Ashford": 10.76,
"Evelyn Ashford": 10.79,
"Marlies Gohr": 10.81]
Literally. But when I am decoding my response with:
struct PersonsResponse: Decodable {
let persons: KeyValuePairs<String, Person>
...
...
init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
...
let personsDictionary = try container.decode([String: Person].self, forKey: .persons)
and then try to do:
persons = personsDictionary
of course it doesn't work at all. I tried to do all kinds of magic already with no luck. Does anyone have any solution to parsing dictionaries into ordered sequences or even Arrays? Thanks for helping!
There is NO WAY the JSON response changes into being an array and YES it always is the same order.

Answer 1

Both Swift, JSON Dictionaries are unordered by there nature. The JSON format does notmaintain key ordering, and as such, does not required parser to preserve the order.
If you need an ordered collection, you its better to returning an array of key-value pairs in the JSON
{
"persons": [
{ "John": {
"name": "John",
"age": 24
}
},
{"Michael": {
"name": "Michael",
"age": 44
}
},
{ "Jack": {
"name": "Jack",
"age": 25
}
}
]
}