Strings end up as nulls - ios

Question

I have a sequence of code. In it there are custom objects: Item and ItemList. The relevant members of these are Item.code and ItemList.ItemDictionary. Item.code is simply a NSString code (Like "AVK") that uniquely identifies an Item. These Items are separated into categories. There are 4 categories (Named "CatOne", etc). The ItemDictionary is a dictionary with the category names as keys and an NSMutableArray as the object; the array is filled with Item objects that are part of the category.
The basic problem is that when I try to access the Item.code, the string comes out as (null).
The functionality is that I have an array of updated Items (updatedItems) and I want to update the ItemList.ItemDictionary with these new Items.
The following are all properties of the object, and are synthesized in the main file.
#synthesize ItemListFromFile;
#synthesize upDatedItems;
#synthesize tempPassedManifest;
And the code:
-(id) upDatedItems:(NSArray *)newItems manifest:(Manifest *)manifest {
ItemListFromFile = [[ItemList alloc] init];
ItemListFromFile.ItemDictionary = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
ItemListFromFile = [NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithFile:manifest.ItemListSavePath];
updatedItems = newItems
tempPassedManifest = manifest;
[self UpdateItemList];
return self;
}
-(void)UpdateItemList {
NSMutableArray *newItemArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
NSMutableArray *oldItemArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
// Go through each category. "i" is category Number
for (int i=1; i <= [Number of Categories]; i++)
{
NSString *currentCategoryName = [Get Category Name]; //This works...
// ********* Debug statements ************
// This Loop is where NSLog shows something's not right
// These conditions work fine.
for (int j = 0; j < [[ItemListFromFile.ItemDictionary objectForKey:currentCategoryName] count]; j++)
{
// This Log outputs (null) when it should output the code from the Item
NSLog(#"Code from File: %#", [[[ItemListFromFile.ItemDictionary objectForKey:currentCategoryName] objectAtIndex:j] code]);
}
// ************** Debug ******************
if ([[ItemListFromFile.ItemDictionary allKeys] containsObject:currentCategoryName])
{
[oldItemArray setArray:[ItemListFromFile.ItemDictionary objectForKey:currentCategoryName]];
for (Item *anItem in oldItemArray)
{
NSLog(#"OldItemArray Code: %#", anItem.code);
}
}
else
{
[oldItemArray removeAllObjects];
}
[newItemArray removeAllObjects];
// Go through each Item in category i.
for (NSString *currentCode in [array of codes in category i (this works)])
{
// There's two options of where to grab each Item from: either upDatedItems or oldItemArray
BOOL inOldArray = YES;
for (Item *anItem in upDatedItems)
{
if ([anItem.code isEqualToString:currentCode])
{
[newItemArray addObject:anItem];
inOldArray = NO;
NSLog(#"%# was in updatedItems", currentCode);
break;
}
}
if (inOldArray)
{
// Checking in old Item Array
for (Item *anItem in oldItemArray)
{
NSLog(#"Checking %# against %#", anItem.code, currentCode);
// (anItem.code is null)
if ([anItem.code isEqualToString:currentCode])
{
[newItemArray addObject:anItem];
NSLog(#"%# was in oldItems", currentCode);
break;
}
}
}
}
//We've created the array, so add it to dictionary
[ItemListFromFile.ItemDictionary setObject:newItemArray forKey:currentCategoryName];
NSLog(#"New Dance Array: %#", newDanceArray);
}
[NSKeyedArchiver archiveRootObject:ItemListFromFile toFile:tempPassedManifest.ItemListSavePath];
}
I've tried to be as thorough as possible, but do not hesitate to ask for clarification.
Update
I've been trying a lot of solutions to this, but nothing seems to be working. Things I've tried:
Creating an object that takes the place of *anItem, so instead of a for loop that loops through the contents of the array, loops from i=0..[Count], and then sets the object at that index to the item I created before the loop. I thought this might help so that I could allocate and initialize the Item.code before setting it to whatever the Item has.
Using
oldItemArray = [ItemListFromFile.ItemDictionary objectForKey:currentCategoryName];
instead of
[oldItemArray setArray:[ItemListFromFile.ItemDictionary objectForKey:currentCategoryName]];
I tried updating all of the items in the ItemList.ItemDictionary so that when it archives, all of the items are fresh for the next trial run of the code.