Parsing strings in iOS

Question

I have a NSString that I can decide the format for, in which I will store contact groups and group members, like so:

Friends|John Smith|Jane Doe
Imaginary Friends|Mary Poppins|Harry Potter|Arya Stark
(\n after last member name)

The "|" is a temporary divider I'm using because it is unlikely to appear in contact and group names.

I save this to file and need to extract the groups and group members names as NSStrings when I next load up this file. How would I do this?

First, you might want to store your names in an array so you can sort them, etc. You can always add the comma, |, or whatever when you write to file, but your life will be easier without them while trying to do sort or other operations. Second, consider using an existing file format. For example, there are good JSON libraries, and you can store an array right to JSON and then pull it back into your program as an array. — Rab
– Rab, Commented Jan 6, 2012 at 3:24
Why not just write an array to and from a file? See stackoverflow.com/questions/1487606/saving-a-nsarray — bryanmac
– bryanmac, Commented Jan 6, 2012 at 3:31

Shane Powell · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-06 03:32:44Z

2

I think you want to look at NSString method - (NSArray *)componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:(NSCharacterSet *)separator or - (NSArray *)componentsSeparatedByString:(NSString *)separator

e.g.

NSArray* members = [contactLine componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet: [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString: @"|"]];

answered Jan 6, 2012 at 3:32

Shane Powell

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Serendipity Over a year ago

This is the way I ended up doing it, but now to think about it, I don't think parsing strings was the right way to save the information. Thanks anyways for the rapid answer.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:34:46Z

1

You should reconsider creating your own file format with your own custom delimiters etc...

You could write an array to and from a file using:

- (BOOL)writeToFile:(NSString *)path atomically:(BOOL)flag
- (id)initWithContentsOfFile:(NSString *)aPath

If you are storing custom objects, you could also implement NSCoding and NSKeyedArchiver

See Saving a NSArray

Finally, you could use CoreData or Sqlite if you data and querying patterns become more complex.

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:34

CommunityBot

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answered Jan 6, 2012 at 3:32

bryanmac

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