Convert array of custom object to AnyObject in Swift - ios

Question

In my app I am doing something like this:
struct Record {
var exampleData : String
}
class ExampleClass : UIViewController {
let records = [Record]()
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
let data = NSKeyedArchiver.archivedDataWithRootObject(self.records) as! NSData
}
...
}
But in the last line of viewDidLoad() I got this error:
Argument type '[Record]' does not conform to expected type 'AnyObject'
How can I fix this? Thanks.

Answer 1

If you want to keep struct, you can encode data using withUnsafePointer(). Here's an example, which I adapted from this Gist:
import UIKit
enum EncodingStructError: ErrorType {
case InvalidSize
}
func encode<T>(var value: T) -> NSData {
return withUnsafePointer(&value) { p in
NSData(bytes: p, length: sizeofValue(value))
}
}
func decode<T>(data: NSData) throws -> T {
guard data.length == sizeof(T) else {
throw EncodingStructError.InvalidSize
}
let pointer = UnsafeMutablePointer<T>.alloc(1)
data.getBytes(pointer, length: data.length)
return pointer.move()
}
enum Result<T> {
case Success(T)
case Failure
}
I added some error handling and marked the method as throws. Here's one way you can use it, in a do…catch block:
var res: Result<String> = .Success("yeah")
var data = encode(res)
do {
var decoded: Result<String> = try decode(data)
switch decoded {
case .Failure:
"failure"
case .Success(let v):
"success: \(v)" // => "success: yeah"
}
} catch {
print(error)
}
The error handling I added will not decode if the NSData length doesn't match the type size. This can commonly happen if you write the data to disk, the user updates to a newer version of the app with a different-sized version of the same type, and then the data is read in.
Also note that sizeof() and sizeofValue() may return different values on different devices, so this isn't a great solution for sending data between devices (NSJSONSerialization might be better for that).

Answer 2

AnyObject means any reference type object, primarily a class. A struct is a value type and cannot be passed to a function needing an AnyObject. Any can be used to accept value types as well as reference types. To fix your code above, change struct Record to class Record. But I have a feeling you may want to use a struct for other reasons. You can create a class wrapper around Record that you can convert to and from to use for functions that need an AnyObject.

Answer 3

I did a similar thing:
static func encode<T>(value: T) -> NSData {
var val = value
return withUnsafePointer(to: &val) { pointer in
NSData(bytes: pointer, length: MemoryLayout.size(ofValue: val))
}
}
static func decode<T>(data: NSData) -> T {
guard data.length == MemoryLayout<T>.size.self else {
fatalError("[Credential] fatal unarchiving error.")
}
let pointer = UnsafeMutablePointer<T>.allocate(capacity: 1)
data.getBytes(pointer, length: data.length)
return pointer.move()
}