Converting nested codable objects to dictionaries swift

Question

I am currently using this extension which works fine for basic objects. I am having a hard time figuring out how to convert nested Codable objects to dictionaries with this call...thanks in advance!

public extension Encodable {
  var dictionary: [String: Any]? {
    guard let data = try? JSONEncoder().encode(self) else { return nil }
    return (try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data, options: .allowFragments)).flatMap { $0 as? [String: Any] }
  }
}

Leo Dabus · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-18 20:57:37Z

2

I am not sure what do you mean by nested dictionaries but it looks like you don't want to return an array of dictionaries. I think what you are looking for is a dictionary where its values are dictionaries. Anyway I will post both options:

extension Encodable {
    // this would try to encode an encodable type and decode it into an a dictionary
    var dictionary: [String: Any] {
        guard let data = try? JSONEncoder().encode(self) else { return [:] }
        return (try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data)) as? [String: Any] ?? [:]
    }
    // this would try to encode an encodable type and decode it into an array of dictionaries
    var dictionaries: [[String: Any]] {
        guard let data = try? JSONEncoder().encode(self) else { return [] }
        return (try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data)) as? [[String: Any]] ?? []
    }
    // this would try to encode an encodable type and decode it into a dictionary with dictionaries as its value
    var nestedDictionaries: [String: [String: Any]] {
        guard let data = try? JSONEncoder().encode(self) else { return [:] }
        return (try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data)) as? [String: [String: Any]] ?? [:]
    }
    // this will return only the properties that are referring to a nested structure/classe
    var nestedDictionariesOnly: [String: [String: Any]] {
        guard let data = try? JSONEncoder().encode(self) else { return [:] }
        return ((try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data)) as? [String: Any] ?? [:]).compactMapValues { $0 as? [String:Any] }
    }
}

edited Aug 18, 2020 at 20:57

answered Aug 14, 2020 at 0:12

Leo Dabus

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9 Comments

TheCoderateKid Over a year ago

So for example : if i had a user object with a profile object inside. I want to convert the user object to a dictionary but within that dictionary convert the profile object to a dictionary. [“user”: [“profile” : some data]]

Leo Dabus Over a year ago

Show your encodable object and the expected output

TheCoderateKid Over a year ago

struct Example: Codable { let nestedExample: NestedExample } struct NestedExample: Codable { let nestedExample: String } Expected output let dict = ["example" : ["nestedExample": "nestedString"]] Thanks for the help

TheCoderateKid Over a year ago

I will say this wont work for an object that looks like this struct Example: Codable { let nestedExample: NestedExample let samepleString: String }

Leo Dabus Over a year ago

So what do you want? Do you want to discard those properties? You can also return nil instead of an empty dictionary.

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