Case Insensitive Search in NSMutableDictionary

Question

HI, I have a NSMutableDicitionary contains both lowercase and uppercase keys. So currently i don't know how to find the key in the dictionary irrespective key using objective c.

Answer 1

Categories to the rescue. Ok, so it's an old post...

@interface NSDictionary (caseINsensitive)
-(id) objectForCaseInsensitiveKey:(id)aKey;
@end


@interface NSMutableDictionary (caseINsensitive)
-(void) setObject:(id) obj forCaseInsensitiveKey:(id)aKey ;
@end


@implementation NSDictionary (caseINsensitive)

-(id) objectForCaseInsensitiveKey:(id)aKey {
    for (NSString *key in self.allKeys) {
        if ([key compare:aKey options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch] == NSOrderedSame) {
            return [self objectForKey:key];
        }
    }
    return  nil;
}
@end


@implementation NSMutableDictionary (caseINsensitive)

-(void) setObject:(id) obj forCaseInsensitiveKey:(id)aKey {
    for (NSString *key in self.allKeys) {
        if ([key compare:aKey options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch] == NSOrderedSame) {
            [self setObject:obj forKey:key];
            return;
        }
    }
    [self setObject:obj forKey:aKey];
}

@end

enjoy.

Answer 2

Do you have control over the creation of the keys? If you do, I'd just force the keys to either lower or upper case when you're creating them. This way when you need to look up something, you don't have to worry about mixed case keys.