NSTEasyJSON

Inpired by SwiftyJSON. NSTEasyJSON makes it easy to deal with JSON data in Objective-C.

1. Why is the typical JSON handling in Objective-C NOT good
2. Requirements
3. Integration
4. Usage
   • Initialization
   • Subscript
   • Optional getter
   • Non-optional getter

Why is the typical JSON handling in Objective-C NOT good?

Objective-C is not very strict about types, but even without strictness we cannot save time because we have to check types ourselves for safety.

Take the Twitter API for example. Say we want to retrieve a user's "name" value of some tweet in Objective-C (according to Twitter's API https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/statuses/home_timeline).

The code would look like this:

NSDictionary *dictionary = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:data options:NSJSONReadingAllowFragments error:&error];
NSString *user = dictionary[@"user"];
// Now we got the username
// But is it NSString for sure?

We got the username in 2 lines, but will JSON always be NSDictionary? Can API send null as value for user key? To be safe we need to add some lines:

NSDictionary *dictionary = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:data options:NSJSONReadingAllowFragments error:&error];
if (![dictionary isKindOfClass:[NSDictionary class]]) {
	// Print the error
}
NSString *user = dictionary[@"user"];
if (![user isKindOfClass:[NSString class]]) {
 	// Print the error
}
// There's our username

It's simple, but it boilerplate for sure!

With NSTEasyJSON all you have to do is:

NSTEasyJSON *JSON = [NSTEasyJSON withData:dataFromNetworking];
NSString *userName = JSON[0]["user"]["name"].string;
// Now you got your value

And don't worry about the NSNull, out of bounds or other unexpected things. It's done for you automatically.

Requirements

• iOS 7.0+ | macOS 10.10+ | tvOS 9.0+ | watchOS 2.0+
• Xcode 7

Integration

CocoaPods (iOS 7+, OS X 10.9+)

You can use CocoaPods to install NSTEasyJSON by adding it to your Podfile:

platform :ios, '7.0'

target 'MyApp' do
	pod 'NSTEasyJSON'
end

Manually (iOS 7+, OS X 10.9+)

To use this library in your project manually you may:

1. for Projects, just drag NSTEasyJSON.{h,m} to the project tree
2. for Workspaces, include the whole NSTEasyJSON.xcodeproj

Usage

Initialization

#import "NSTEasyJSON.h"

NSTEasyJSON *JSON = [NSTEasyJSON withData:dataFromNetworking];

NSTEasyJSON *JSON = [NSTEasyJSON withObject:jsonObjectArrayOrMaybeDictionary];

Subscript

// Getting a double from a JSON Array
double name = JSON[0].doubleValue;

// Getting a string from a JSON Dictionary
NSString *name = json["name"].stringValue;

Optional getter

// NSNumber
NSNumber *number = JSON[@"user"][@"favourites_count"].number;

// NSString
NSString *string = JSON[@"user"][@"name"].string;
...

Non-optional getter

Non-optional getters are named xxxValue

// If not a Number or nil, return 0
NSNumber *number = JSON[@"user"][@"favourites_count"].numberValue;

// If not a String or nil, return ""
NSString *string = JSON[@"user"][@"name"].stringValue;

// If not an Array or nil, return @[]
NSArray *list = JSON[@"list"].arrayValue;

// If not a Dictionary or nil, return @{}
NSDictionary *dictionary = JSON[@"user"].dictionaryValue;