swift 4 decode json with unknown root name to table view [duplicate] - ios

Question

This question already has answers here:
Using Codable on a dynamic type/object
(2 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I have a json data like this, the root element will be generate by php which data is stored in mysql, and in the future it will be increased or change
{
"Category name 1": [
{
"name": "name 1",
"URL": "http://google.com"
}
],
"Php generated Category name 2": [
{
"name": "name 2",
"URL": "http://google.com"
}
]
}
what I want is i need the category name to be table view section header title so the section row will be listed nicely
however all information that I googled was provided that category name is a fixed name
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

From the data you posted, it looks like you will have this kind of a model:
struct Category: Decodable {
let name: String
let content: [Content]
struct Content: Decodable {
let name: String
let URL: String
}
}
In order to decode the JSON structure to match this model, we will need to do some custom parsing. The first issue we need to address is that we don't know the names of each category in order to parse it, since the key for the category is also the name of it. We will need to introduce a CodingKey that can take any String value, so that it can dynamically load any JSON string key.
/// When encoding/decoding, this struct allows you to dynamically read/create any coding key without knowing the values ahead of time.
struct DynamicCodingKey: CodingKey {
var stringValue: String
init?(stringValue: String) { self.stringValue = stringValue }
var intValue: Int? { return nil }
init?(intValue: Int) { return nil }
}
We will also need a new type that we can use to handle the custom parsing for the entire JSON list. With that new type, we must implement Decodable.init(from:) to do our custom parsing.
struct CategoryList: Decodable {
let categories: [Category]
// This is the model we created in the first step.
struct Category: Decodable {...}
init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
// Key the JSON container with our dynamic keys.
let categoriesContainer = try decoder.container(keyedBy: DynamicCodingKey.self)
// The container's keys will be the names of each of the categories.
// We can loop over each key and decode the Content from the JSON for that
// key, then use the key as the name to create our Category.
categories = try categoriesContainer.allKeys.map { key in
let content = try categoriesContainer.decode([Category.Content].self, forKey: key)
return Category(name: key.stringValue, content: content)
}
}
}
With this CategoryList JSON decoding wrapper, we can decode the JSON in a way that fits our model, and use the model to populate the table with sections. Each Category in the CategoryList would be a section, and each Content within the Category would be a row.
let categories = try JSONDecoder().decode(CategoryList.self, from: data).categories

Answer 2

You can try this structure , and set the generated category title inside the key named title
{
"AllCategories": [{
"title":"any1",
"content" : [
{
"name": "name 1",
"URL": "http://google.com"
},
{
"name": "name 1",
"URL": "http://google.com"
}
]
},
{
"title":"any2",
"content" : [
{
"name": "name 1",
"URL": "http://google.com"
},
{
"name": "name 1",
"URL": "http://google.com"
}
]
}
]
}