Parsing text file with Objective C (issues with containsString:)

Question

The text I'm trying to read from the file looks like this: "DREAM_TITLE: blah blah blah". The issue I'm running into is within the for loop (particularly the containsString method) which keeps telling me that the the key DREAM_TITLE is not there, when it clearly is there and it even gets loaded in the initial array. Please HALP! Very noob here, sorry if anyone's offended. Thanks!

-(NSMutableArray *)findValueForKey:(NSString *)key{

NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"sampleData"
                                                 ofType:@"txt"];

NSString *fileContent = [NSString stringWithContentsOfFile:path
                                                  encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding
                                                     error:NULL];

NSMutableArray *arrayOfKeyValues = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

NSArray *numberOfLines = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:[fileContent  componentsSeparatedByString:@"\n"], nil];

for (int i=0; i<[numberOfLines count]; i++){


    if ([[numberOfLines objectAtIndex:i] containsObject:key]){
        NSArray *tempArray = [numberOfLines[i] componentsSeparatedByString:@":"];
        [arrayOfKeyValues insertObject:[tempArray objectAtIndex:1] atIndex:i];
    }

    else {
        [arrayOfKeyValues insertObject:@"no value for key found" atIndex:i];
    }

}

return arrayOfKeyValues;

Answer 1

You have created an array of an array for some reason, when the original array would have sufficed:

NSArray *numberOfLines = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:[fileContent  componentsSeparatedByString:@"\n"], nil];

this can be simply:

NSArray *lines = [fileContent  componentsSeparatedByString:@"\n"];

Next, to search each line in the array, simply use [NSString rangeOfString:]:

for (NSUInteger i = 0; i < [lines count]; i++) {
    if ([lines[i] rangeOfString:key].location != NSNotFound) {
        NSArray *tempArray = [lines[i] componentsSeparatedByString:@":"];
        [arrayOfKeyValues addObject:tempArray[1]];
     } else {
        [arrayOfKeyValues addObject:@"no value for key found"];
     }
}

Although, this is not particularly accurate, as you should only be searching for key in text before the :...