Check if the value of key in an array of objects is same iOS?

Question

I'd an NSArray with some dictionaries.which has some keys and values.which I'm showing in a tableview. I'd put the section header title is one of the value of a key in that dictionary i.e. like ddDate value. The problem is the same ddDate values needs to come under the same section. So I need to create my array according to that.

responseDict (
        {
        xx = 16;
        yy = 17;
        aa = 0;
        bb = 6;
        cc = 2016;
       ddDate = "17-06-2016";
    },
        {
        xx = 17;
        yy = 17;
        aa = 0;
        bb = 6;
        cc = 2016;

        ddDate = "17-06-2016";

    },
        {
        xx = 18;
        yy = 17;
        aa = 0;
        bb = 6;
        cc = 2016;

        ddDate = "18-06-2016";

    }

ie date is the section title. And those who had the same ddDate values under one section. Can anybody guide me how I can achieve this?

Answer 1

Your goal is to build two data structures; An array of ddDate values; this will be your section information and a dictionary of arrays, keyed by the ddDate values; this will be your row data.

@property (strong, nonatomic) NSArray *sections;
@property (strong, nonatomic) NSDictionary *rows;

- (void)processJSONData:(NSArray *)inputArray {

    NSMutableDictionary *extractedData = [NSMutableDictionary new];
    for (NSDictionary *dict in inputArray) {
        NSString *ddDate = dict["ddDate"];
        NSMutableArray *rowArray = extractedData[ddDate];
        if (rowArray == nil) {
            rowArray = [NSMutableArray new];
            extractedData[ddDate] = rowArray;
        }
        [rowArray addObject:dict];
    }

    self.sections = [extractedData allKeys];
    self.rows = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithDictionary:extractedData];
}

You might like to sort the self.sections array.

The number of sections is self.sections.count and the number of rows in a section are self.rows[self.sections[indexPath.section]].count