text file -> json -> ios array - ios

Question

I have a file with the following format:
/Users/devplayerx/Sandbox/pics/images/001012DG-161.JPG
pixelWidth: 1600
pixelHeight: 1050
filename: 001012DG-161.JPG
/Users/devplayerx/Sandbox/pics/images/001019DG-151 COPY.JPG
pixelWidth: 1600
pixelHeight: 1050
filename: 001019DG-151 COPY.JPG
and would like to, ultimately, have an iOS dictionary with the filename as key, and either a dictionary or array with the pixelWidth and pixelHeight as value. I was considering converting my text file into a JSON file, and then parse it using NSJSONSerialization, but I'm not sure how to convert my text file into JSON. Also, I'd like to remove the full path from the text file, since it's not needed.

Answer 1

Here is a perl script that seems to do the job:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
open FILE,"< yourfile.txt" or die "I/O error : $!\n";
my $w = 0;
my $h = 0;
my $f = "";
print "{\n";
while (my $line = <FILE>)
{
if ($f)
{
print ",\n";
$f = "";
}
if ($line =~ /pixelWidth: ([0-9]+)/)
{
$w = $1;
}
if ($line =~ /pixelHeight: ([0-9]+)/)
{
$h = $1;
}
if ($line =~ /filename: (.*)$/)
{
$f = $1;
print "\t\"$f\" : [ $w, $h ]"
}
}
print "\n}\n";
close FILE;
Note that I'm not an expert in perl so maybe it can be improved, but using it on your input file seems to produce your expected JSON as below:
prompt$ perl scr.pl
{
"001012DG-161.JPG" : [ 1600, 1050 ],
"001019DG-151 COPY.JPG" : [ 1600, 1050 ]
}
Note that once you have your JSON file, you may optionally convert it into a PLIST file using the plutil tool. For example perl scr.pl | plutil -convert binary1 -o yourfile.plist - will create yourfile.plist from the JSON produced by perl scr.pl (my script above). You can then easily read this file in your code using [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:pathToYourFilePlist] and directly have access to your data as an NSDictionary in one line.

Answer 2

The json object could look like this:
{ picture: { path : "thePath", pixelWidth: 1600, pixelHeight: 1050, filename : "name" }}
I would then convert it by taking the rows and putting them in a list, looping through the list and eventually spitting everything out in another text file using the above object notation.
What language do you need to write the tooling to convert it to json in?

Answer 3

You can use NSInputStream to read the text file, on each iteration you can build your dictionary the way you want.
After that just use NSJSONSerialization.