Swift Language Reading & Writing JSON SwiftyJSON

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Example

SwiftyJSON is a Swift framework built to remove the need for optional chaining in normal JSON serialization.

You can download it here: https://github.com/SwiftyJSON/SwiftyJSON

Without SwiftyJSON, your code would look like this to find the name of the first book in a JSON object:

if let jsonObject = try NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData(data, options: .AllowFragments) as? [[String: AnyObject]],
let bookName = (jsonObject[0]["book"] as? [String: AnyObject])?["name"] as? String {
    //We can now use the book name
}

In SwiftyJSON, this is hugely simplified:

let json = JSON(data: data)
if let bookName = json[0]["book"]["name"].string {
    //We can now use the book name
}

It removes the need to check every field, as it will return nil if any of them are invalid.

To use SwiftyJSON, download the correct version from the Git repository - there is a branch for Swift 3. Simply drag the "SwiftyJSON.swift" into your project and import into your class:

import SwiftyJSON

You can create your JSON object using the following two initializers:

let jsonObject = JSON(data: dataObject)

or

let jsonObject = JSON(jsonObject) //This could be a string in a JSON format for example

To access your data, use subscripts:

let firstObjectInAnArray = jsonObject[0]
let nameOfFirstObject = jsonObject[0]["name"]

You can then parse your value to a certain data type, which will return an optional value:

let nameOfFirstObject = jsonObject[0]["name"].string //This will return the name as a string

let nameOfFirstObject = jsonObject[0]["name"].double //This will return null

You can also compile your paths into a swift Array:

let convolutedPath = jsonObject[0]["name"][2]["lastName"]["firstLetter"].string

Is the same as:

let convolutedPath = jsonObject[0, "name", 2, "lastName", "firstLetter"].string

SwiftyJSON also has functionality to print its own errors:

if let name = json[1337].string {
    //You can use the value - it is valid
} else {
    print(json[1337].error) // "Array[1337] is out of bounds" - You cant use the value
}

If you need to write to your JSON object, you can use subscripts again:

var originalJSON:JSON = ["name": "Jack", "age": 18]
originalJSON["age"] = 25 //This changes the age to 25
originalJSON["surname"] = "Smith" //This creates a new field called "surname" and adds the value to it

Should you need the original String for the JSON, for example if you need to write it to a file, you can get the raw value out:

if let string = json.rawString() { //This is a String object
    //Write the string to a file if you like
}

if let data = json.rawData() { //This is an NSData object
    //Send the data to your server if you like
}


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