Converting JSON from AlamoFire/SwiftyJSON to Dictionary in Swift/Xcode

Question

My head is going to explode :) - I've been trying to get a JSON String from my server to a Dictionary Value, and I can't get it to work.

I'm trying to get (from my Server - this is dynamic and I want my app to be able to pull new data from the server when needed):

{"1":"Location 1","2":"Location 2","3":"Location 3"}

To this Dictionary in Xcode using Swift:

  var labels = [

        1 : "Location 1",
        2 : "Location 2",
        3 : "Location 3"

    ]

This has got to be pretty straight forward, but for the life of me I can't figure it out...

Here's my Swift - I can get it to pull the information from the server, but I can't get it into a dictionary like I need

var postEndpoint: String = "http://www.myserver.net/app/campus.php"

    Alamofire.request(.GET, postEndpoint)
        .responseJSON { (request, response, data, error) in
            if let anError = error
            {
                println("error")
                println(error)
            }
            else if let data: AnyObject = data 
            {
                 let post = JSON(data)
                 println(post)
            }
    }

which results in:

{
  "1" : "Location 1",
  "2" : "Location 2",
  "3" : "Location 3"
}

The End Result that I'm using this for is an iBeacon implementation with the following code:

 let knownBeacons = beacons.filter{ $0.proximity != CLProximity.Unknown }
    if (knownBeacons.count > 0) {
        let closestBeacon = knownBeacons[0] as CLBeacon

        let locationID = post[closestBeacon.minor.integerValue]

        self.locationLabel.text = locationID
        self.view.backgroundColor = self.colors[closestBeacon.minor.integerValue]
    }

The error I'm getting is at self.locationLabel.text = locationID 'JSON' is not convertible to 'String', I do not get this error when I use the static var labels dictionary. Am I trying to get the data from the server incorrectly? What am I doing wrong??? I think the var labels having an undeclared Type allows Swift to figure out what it needs to, how do I do the same from the JSON part?

Answer 1

Oh you were so close!

Your problem is that your post dictionary is a [String: String] and not an [Int: String] like you think it is. You have a few ways to fix it, but the easiest for now would be to just do the following:

let locationID = post[String(closestBeacon.minor.integerValue)]!

While this will certainly work, a better solution would be to convert your post into a [Int: String] typed dictionary like you expect in the responseJSON closure. Here's how this could work.

let json = JSON(data)
var post = [Int: String]()

for (key, object) in json {
    post[key.toInt()!] = object.stringValue
}

You would want to add some safety around what to do if the key or object were not able to be converted to an Int or String respectively, but I'll leave that to you.

Answer 2

If having a [String: String] is sufficient for anyone, he/she could try the following code:

let responseString = "{\"1\":\"Location 1\",\"2\":\"Location 2\",\"3\":\"Location 3\"}"

if let dataFromString = responseString.data(using: String.Encoding.utf8, allowLossyConversion: false) {

    let json = JSON(data: dataFromString)

    var labels = json.dictionaryObject! as! [String: String]

    print(labels)
}

The result is: ["2": "Location 2", "1": "Location 1", "3": "Location 3"].