XML Parsing in Swift 2 (Xcode 7) - ios

Question

I am needing help parsing XML from a URL. I have read on this a lot and cannot figure out how to get this. All the examples I have found are a little ambiguous with the examples and how to grab the info from parsed XML data.
How would I parse this XML
<menu>
<menuitems>
<item price="$10">Pizza</item>
<item price="$5">Salad</item>
<item price="$3">Bread</item>
</menuitems>
</menu>
This is the tutorial I was going off of but I couldn't understand how this tutorial was accessing the data in the arrays and dictionary.
http://www.theappguruz.com/blog/xml-parsing-using-nsxmlparse-swift
In Xcode 7 (Swift 2), how would I parse and access this info. I know this is not how it would be accessed but I am looking for something like the code below.
print ("\(item[0].data)") // Pizza //
print ("\(item[0].price)") // $10 //
Here is the code from the tutorial but I couldn't figure out how to access all the data parsed from the URL. How would I edit this code to fit my structure?
import UIKit
import Foundation
class ViewController: UIViewController, NSXMLParserDelegate
{
var parser = NSXMLParser()
var posts = NSMutableArray()
var elements = NSMutableDictionary()
var element = NSString()
var title1 = NSMutableString()
var date = NSMutableString()
func beginParsing()
{
posts = []
parser = NSXMLParser(contentsOfURL:(NSURL(string:"http://images.apple.com/main/rss/hotnews/hotnews.rss"))!)!
parser.delegate = self
parser.parse()
}
func parser(parser: NSXMLParser, didStartElement elementName: String, namespaceURI: String?, qualifiedName qName: String?, attributes attributeDict: [String : String])
{
element = elementName
if (elementName as NSString).isEqualToString("item")
{
elements = NSMutableDictionary()
elements = [:]
title1 = NSMutableString()
title1 = ""
date = NSMutableString()
date = ""
}
}
func parser(parser: NSXMLParser, foundCharacters string: String)
{
if element.isEqualToString("title") {
title1.appendString(string)
} else if element.isEqualToString("pubDate") {
date.appendString(string)
}
}
func parser(parser: NSXMLParser, didEndElement elementName: String, namespaceURI: String?, qualifiedName qName: String?)
{
if (elementName as NSString).isEqualToString("item") {
if !title1.isEqual(nil) {
elements.setObject(title1, forKey: "title")
}
if !date.isEqual(nil) {
elements.setObject(date, forKey: "date")
}
posts.addObject(elements)
}
}
}

Answer 1

It looks like that parser code was borrowed from something else. If this really is your XML, think it's simpler than that. The only trick in your case is that price is not an element, but rather just an attributeDict of the item element. And I might create my own custom type, Item to capture the name and price of an item.
Anyway, you might end up with something like:
struct Item {
let name: String
let price: String
}
var itemName: String?
var itemPrice: String?
var items: [Item]!
func parserDidStartDocument(parser: NSXMLParser) {
items = []
}
func parser(parser: NSXMLParser, didStartElement elementName: String, namespaceURI: String?, qualifiedName qName: String?, attributes attributeDict: [String : String]) {
if elementName == "item" {
itemPrice = attributeDict["price"]
itemName = ""
}
}
func parser(parser: NSXMLParser, foundCharacters string: String) {
itemName?.appendContentsOf(string)
}
func parser(parser: NSXMLParser, didEndElement elementName: String, namespaceURI: String?, qualifiedName qName: String?) {
if elementName == "item" {
items.append(Item(name: itemName!, price: itemPrice!))
itemName = nil
itemPrice = nil
}
}
When I do that, and print items, I get:
[MyApp.ViewController.Item(name: "Pizza", price: "$10"),
MyApp.ViewController.Item(name: "Salad", price: "$5"),
MyApp.ViewController.Item(name: "Bread", price: "$3")]