How to serialize a custom object in NSDictionary using JSON?

Question

I have the following code:

NSDictionary *dict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjectsAndKeys:@"one", @"oneKey", 
@"two", @"twoKey", customObject, @"customObjectKey", nil];
if([NSJSONSerialization isValidJSONObject:dict])
{
    NSLog(@"Went through.");
}

It'll go through if the objects were NSString's, but once I added the customObject into the dictionary, it's no longer valid. How can I fix that? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You would require to use NSCoding protocol to serialize a custom object.

Implement the NSCoding protocol in .h file and implement the following methods in .m file of your custom class.

- (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder
{
   if(self = [super init]) // this needs to be [super initWithCoder:aDecoder] if the superclass implements NSCoding
   {
      aString = [[aDecoder decodeObjectForKey:@"aStringkey"] retain];
      anotherString = [[aDecoder decodeObjectForKey:@"anotherStringkey"] retain];
   }
   return self;
}

and

- (void)encodeWithCoder:(NSCoder *)encoder
{
   // add [super encodeWithCoder:encoder] if the superclass implements NSCoding
   [encoder encodeObject:aString forKey:@"aStringkey"];
   [encoder encodeObject:anotherString forKey:@"anotherStringkey"];
}