Cannot get the right file to display in UITextView swift - ios

Question

I have declared a global variable 'var recipes = String: PFFile'.
On parse.com, I created a column called "recipe" of type File and i have uploaded .txt files that contain the recipes.
I am trying to load the contents of the .txt files from parse to a UITextView.
I have tried many things and this is what I have:
var recipes = [String: PFFile]()
var valueToPass: String!
var valuePassed: String!
var appetizer = [String]()
var images = [String: UIImage]()
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
let query = PFQuery(className: "Appetizers")
query.orderByAscending("recipe")
query.findObjectsInBackgroundWithBlock { (objects, error) in
guard error == nil, let objects = objects else {
print(error)
return
}
for object in objects {
// ... Appetizer Name
let appetizerName = object.objectForKey("appetizer") as! String
self.name.text = self.valuePassed
// ... Recipe
var recipes = [String: String]()
let recipeFile = object["recipe"] as! PFFile
do {
let recipeData = try recipeFile.getData()
let recipe = String(data: recipeData , encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding)!
print(recipe) // recipe is now a string you can store or display
self.myTextView.text = recipe
} catch {
print("something went wrong")
}
// ... Image
let imageFile = object["imageFiles"] as!PFFile
imageFile.getDataInBackgroundWithBlock({ (imageData, error) -> Void in
if error == nil {
let data = imageData
} else {
print(error)
}
if let data = imageData {
self.images[appetizerName] = UIImage(data: data)
self.imageView.image = self.images[self.valuePassed]
}
})
}
}
}
I am able to display the recipe with the above code but not the one i chose. It is printing all the recipes in the logs but in a random order (but the same order each time) and the last one is the one being printed in the UITextView.
I can't seem to get the one i am choosing.

Answer 1

You create a dictionary recipes of type [string: PFFile]. Presumably this is to contain all the recipes returned by Parse. Then you never populate that dictionary.
Later down in your code you have this line:
let recipeFile = object["recipe"] as! PFFile
Is that the PFFile you want to add to your dictionary?
If so, then you could use code like this:
let someKey = //Whatever string key you want to use to store a recipe
recipes[someKey] = recipeFile
You say "I am trying to load the contents of the .txt files from parse to a UITextView. "
So you're trying to add the combined contents of all the text files into a single UITextView?
In that case you would need to change this line:
let recipe = String(data: recipeData , encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding)!
Say you create a new var:
var allRecipesText = String()
Then you could add a line below the line that coverts a recipe to a String:
let recipe = String(data: recipeData , encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding)!
//concatenate the new recipe string to the end of allRecipiesText
allRecipiesText += recipe
Do you really need to save the PFFile objects, or do you want to save the converted text? And do you really want your recipes in a dictionary, or would you rather have them in an array?

Answer 2

With this code, i was able to display the recipe i chose in the previous tableviewcontroller:
let recipeFile = object["recipe"] as! PFFile
do {
let recipeData = try recipeFile.getData()
let recipe = String(data: recipeData , encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding)!
// recipe is now a string you can store or display
self.recipes[appetizerName] = recipe
self.myTextView.text = self.recipes[self.valuePassed]
} catch {
print("something went wrong")
}
appetizerName: used as the appetizer's name
valuePassed: chosen recipe in the tableview controller