Parsing JSON with NSDictionary - ios

Question

I am working on an app which fetches data from a server. I convert this data to XML and then parse it using XMLDictionary. My problem is counting the number of objects inside the dictionary.
"finance_fee_collection" = (
{
amount = "790.00";
"due_date" = "2015-06-04";
name = "Third Payment";
},
{
amount = "790.00";
"due_date" = "2014-12-11";
name = "First Payment";
},
{
amount = "740.00";
"due_date" = "2015-07-06";
name = "third payment";
}
);
Counting the above number of objects yields 3, which is true. But counting the following also results 3.
"finance_fee_collection" = {
amount = "740.00";
"due_date" = "2015-07-06";
name = "third payment";
};
What I want is to count the number of "finance_fee_collection" items, such that the first one results 3 and the second one results 1. Is there anyway I can approach this goal?

Answer 1

The first one seems to be an array, the second a dictionary:
if([finance_fee_collection iskindOfClass:[NSDictionary class]]){
count = 1;
} else {
count = result.count;
}
something similar to this should work. :) hope it is helpful.

Answer 2

This doesn't make sense really, since both NSArray and NSDictionary implement the count method, which should return 3 for both structures:
id obj = #[#1 ,#2, #3]; // This is an NSArray
NSLog(#"%lu", (unsigned long)[obj count]); // Outputs 3
obj = #{ #1:#1,
#2:#2,
#3:#3
}; // now it's an NSDictionary
NSLog(#"%lu", (unsigned long)[obj count]); // Outputs 3
Were you using [object count] to get the count?
Either way, I wouldn't assume that count would be 1 simply because the data structure is a dictionary (you didn't count it)