Populate List in Swift 2.0 and display results - ios

Question

I've been learning iOS development for the past three weeks, I'm currently following a course on Udemy so far so good.
However I'm following one of the lectures whereby we build an Instagram Clone.
The instructor is using three arrays which are as follows:
var usernames = [""] // Stores all usernames
var userIds = [""] // Stores all Id's of the given usernames
var isFollowing = [false] // Stores where or not you're following that user
To me trying to keep track of what userId goes with what username using two arrays is basically an accident waiting to happen so I decided to set off and find a more feasible approach. I reverted back to my .Net days and decided to create a list so I went and created a class as follows:
class Users{
var Username : NSString = ""
var UserId : NSString = ""
var Following : Bool = false
}
Now inside my ViewController I make a call to Parse which returns me a list of users and I'm basically trying to loop through the response, and add them to the list class as shown here:
var t = [Users]() // After googling the web, this seems to be the syntax for a list declaration ?
let u = Users()
for object in users{
if let o = object as? PFUser {
u.Username = o.username!
u.UserId = o.objectId!
u.Following = o.IsFollowing!
self.t.append(u)
}
}
print(self.t)
Now when I print this to the console I see the following:
ParseStarterProject_Swift.Users
As I have one user at present, however when I try to loop through T and display the username in the console it doesn't display anything.
for x in t {
print(x.Username)
}

Answer 1

Your basic intuition is correct, it's better to have an array of custom objects, not multiple arrays.
Regarding making it more Swifty, consider your Users type. You might want something like:
struct User {
let username: String
let userId: String
let following: Bool
}
Note,
property names should start with lowercase letter;
Users should probably be called User, as it represents a single user;
we don't generally initialize values to default values like that, but rather specify them in the initializer;
we probably use String not NSString;
if a property cannot change, you'd use let, not var;
properties begin with lower case letters;
Then you can do something like:
var t = [User]()
for object in users {
if let o = object as? PFUser {
t.append(User(username: o.username!, userId: o.objectId!, following: o.IsFollowing!)
}
}
print(t)
Clearly, with all of those ! forced unwrapping operators, you'd want to be confident that those fields were populated for all of those properties.
Using struct is nice because (a) it's a value type; (b) you get the initializer for free; and (c) you can just print them. If you really wanted User to be a reference type (a class), you'd do something like:
class User {
let username: String
let userId: String
let following: Bool
init(username: String, userId: String, following: Bool) {
self.username = username
self.userId = userId
self.following = following
}
}
And if you wanted to be able to just print them, you'd define it to conform to CustomStringConvertible:
extension User: CustomStringConvertible {
var description: String { return "<User; username = \(username); userId = \(userId); following = \(following)>" }
}
With the class, you can feel free to change that description computed property to show it in whatever format you want, but it illustrates the idea.

Answer 2

You are correct in considering that keeping track of what userId goes with what username using two arrays is dangerous, you in the correct direction with your approach.
First, I would just like to suggest that you use correct naming convention:
Classes should be singular (except in very specific cases).
Variable/property names should begin with lowercase.
This would mean that your user class should look like this:
class User {
var username : NSString = ""
var userId : NSString = ""
var following : Bool = false
}
I will keep your existing naming use for the next part. The main problem with your code is that the variable "u" is a object which you create only once and then modify it. You should be creating a new "Users" object for each user instead of modifying the original. If you don't do this you will just have an array with the same user multiple times. This is how your code would look now:
var t = [Users]()
for object in users {
if let o = object as? PFUser {
let u = Users()
u.Username = o.username!
u.UserId = o.objectId!
u.Following = o.IsFollowing!
self.t.append(u)
}
}
print(self.t)
Next you mention that when you print to console you see the text: ParseStarterProject_Swift.Users, that is because Swift does not automatically print a pretty text with the content of your object. In order for it to print something more detailed, your "Users" object would need to implement the CustomStringConvertible. You can see a more detailed answer about that here: how-can-i-change-the-textual-representation-displayed-for-a-type-in-swif.
Lastly, you mention that when you loop trough "t" and display the username in the console it does not display anything. This is caused by one of two things:
Because there are no users being returned from parse, so the "t" array is actually empty. Try print(t.count) to see how many objects are in the array.
Because your "Users" object declares an empty string "" as the default username and the username is not being set correctly when getting the data from the parse. Which means that it IS actually printing something, just that it is an empty string. Try defining a different default value like var username : NSString = "Undefined" to see if it prints something.
Good luck learning swift!