How do I parse an NSString containing XML in Objective-C?
In my iPhone application, I have the following NSString:
NSString *myxml=@"<students>
<student><name>Raju</name><age>25</age><address>abcd</address>
</student></students>";
How would I parse the XML content of this string?
Download: https://github.com/bcaccinolo/XML-to-NSDictionary
Then you simply do :
NSDictionary *dic = [XMLReader dictionaryForXMLString:myxml error:nil];
Result is a NSDictionary *dic with dictionaries, arrays and strings inside, depending of the XML:
{
students = {
student = {
address = abcd;
age = 25;
name = Raju;
};
};
}
You should use the NSXMLParser class
Here's a link to the documentation for that class: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSXMLParser_Class/Reference/Reference.html
Your code should look something like this:
@implementation MyClass
- (void)startParsing {
NSData *xmlData = (Get XML as NSData)
NSXMLParser *parser = [[[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithData:xmlData] autorelease];
[parser setDelegate:self];
[parser parse];
}
- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didStartElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qualifiedName attributes:(NSDictionary *)attributeDict {
NSLog(@"Started %@", elementName);
}
Another answer is: Don't use XML. Use a plist instead, which is written using XML but more easily parsable in Objective-C into distinct data types (NSArray for example has a method to convert a file or NSData plist into an NSArray).