DynamoDB - how to extract NSString from Data set - ios

Question

Using the DynamoDBItemRequest in extracting the 'firstName' object, what I get is this:
{S: Will,N: (null),B: (null),SS: (
),NS: (
),BS: (
),}
I've tried extracting the first object but it keeps giving me an error. After a bit of digging I realised that DynamoDB does not return an NSString or an NSArray object. Anyone have any luck extracting the dataset?
Here's my code -
-(void)tap
{
DynamoDBGetItemRequest *getItemRequest = [[DynamoDBGetItemRequest new] autorelease];
DynamoDBAttributeValue *attributeValue = [[[DynamoDBAttributeValue alloc] initWithN:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%d", 1]] autorelease];
getItemRequest.tableName = TEST_TABLE_NAME;
getItemRequest.key = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithObject:attributeValue forKey:TEST_TABLE_HASH_KEY];
DynamoDBGetItemResponse *getItemResponse = [[AmazonClientManager ddb] getItem:getItemRequest];
NSMutableDictionary *userPreferences = getItemResponse.item;
NSArray *abc = [userPreferences objectForKey:#"lastName"];
NSLog(#"%#", abc);
}
Here's my attempt at the code that keeps giving me error->
// NSString *abb = abc[1];
// NSLog(#"%#", abb);

Answer 1

In DynamoDB, an attribute can be of only one type (String, Number, Binary, StringSet, NumberSet, BinarySet). The object that you are printing out is of type "String", and has the content "Will". Dynamo would probably be clearer if it printed it like this:
{S:Will}
But instead it's just converting the AttributeValue to a String, and showing you all of the other (empty) values inside of it:
{S: Will,N: (null),B: (null),SS: ( ),NS: ( ),BS: ( ),}
Everything else is just noise; all that's important is that it's a String with the content "Will".