How to convert XML to dictionary

ashwanik04 · April 2009

I need help in parsing XML
<Grandfather>
<Son name="1">
<Grandson name="1" />
</Son>
<Son name="2">
<Grandson name="1" />
</Son>
<Son name="3">
<Grandson name="1" />
<Grandson name="2" />
<Grandson name="3" />
</Son>
</Grandfather>

Can any body tell me how to convert this XML into dictionary
of the format
key(son) value(NSArray of grandsons)
Thanks in advance

smithdale87 · April 2009

It looks like you're gonna have to parse the XML and build the dictionary manually.

Look into NSXMLParser, it's quite easy to use.

ashwanik04 · April 2009

smithdale87 wrote: »

It looks like you're gonna have to parse the XML and build the dictionary manually.

Look into NSXMLParser, it's quite easy to use.

I tried but with no luck
More help is required as I am new to iPhone application development

smithdale87 · April 2009

can you post your code, and then we can discuss what you are doing wrong, or possibly a different approach?

epicjorge · April 2009

If you can get your xml data in plist format it would be much easier to do.

Kalimba · April 2009

ashwanik04 wrote: »

I tried but with no luck
More help is required as I am new to iPhone application development

There's really no iPhone SDK API that I'm aware of that gives you this functionality for "free", so it may actually require some real "programming" to achieve this.

vineeth_c · August 2009

use tinyxml to parse dictionary. this is a light weight c++ library..:)

kelvinkao · August 2009

I think you will find this helpful.
Event-Driven XML Programming Guide for Cocoa: Introduction to Event-Driven XML Programming Guide for Cocoa

Benoit Caccinolo · December 2010

To easily convert XML to NSDictionary, here is a little lib to do this conversion:

XML to NSDictionary Converter bcaccinolo's blog

The code is on Github.

Cheers,

Cur · June 2011

improved code of bcaccinolo's code:
https://github.com/Insert-Witty-Name/XML-to-NSDictionary

You simply do:

NSDictionary *dic = [XMLReader dictionaryForXMLString:XML error:nil];

You get:

{
    Grandfather =     {
        Son =         (
                        {
                Grandson =                 {
                    name = 1;
                };
                name = 1;
            },
                        {
                Grandson =                 {
                    name = 1;
                };
                name = 2;
            },
                        {
                Grandson =                 (
                                        {
                        name = 1;
                    },
                                        {
                        name = 2;
                    },
                                        {
                        name = 3;
                    }
                );
                name = 3;
            }
        );
    };
}

leoromerbric · November 2011

Hey everybody:)...I have a problem.

I used the XMLReader class to get a NSDictionary and everything works fine. But i can't to get the values of the atributes of my productData element.

Specifically i have the following NSDictionary:

{
response = {
products = {
productsData = (
{
alias = "Product 1";
id = 01;
price = "10";
},
{
alias = "Product 2";
id = 02;
price = "20";
},
{
alias = "Product 3";
id = 03;
price = "30";
}
);
};
};
}

I used this code to create de NSDictionary:

NSDictionary *dictionary = [XMLReader dictionaryForXMLData:responseData error:&parseError];

and responseData contains:

<application><products>
<productData>
<id>01</id>
<price>10</price>
<alias>Product 1</alias>
</productData>
<productData>
<id>02</id>
<price>20</price>
<alias>Product 2</alias>
</productData>
<productData>
<id>02</id>
<price>20</price>
<alias>Product 3</alias>
</productData>
</products>
</application>

Then, i don't know how get the values of each productData like id, price and alias...

Anybody know how do it??

Thanks and please forgive my bad english

!

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How to convert XML to dictionary

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