Cocoa class to reference many entries by a single key

Question

I need a Cocoa data structure to keep something like a list of locations of a set of insects in a field over time. Clearly an NSDictionary has to have unique keys, so I couldn't use the insect as a key and MKUserlocation as the object.

Is there any other class besides NSArray where one does not have to step through, if/else-ing at each index?

There seems to be such a thing as NSList discussed in various places but nothing in the Apple docs.

I also saw a reference to NSIndexSet one uses in conjunction to an NSArray, but again reading the Apple docs suggests it's not useful to me.

Answer 1

Since Cocoa framework does not offer a multimap container, you could implement your own by creating an NSMutableDictionary, and populating it with NSMutableArray objects.

NSMutableDictionary locByInsect = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];

// Adding a location for an insect:

MyInsect *insect = ... // Don't forget to provide hash code and equality checks
MyLocation *location = ...
NSMutableDictionary *insectLocations = locByInsect[insect];
if (insectLocations == nil) {
    insectLocations = [NSMutableArray array];
    locByInsect[insect] = insectLocations;
}
[insectLocations addObject:location];

// Retrieving all locations for an insect
for (MyLocation *loc in locByInsect[insect]) {
    NSLog(@"Saw %@ at %@", insect, loc);
}