Obj-C easy method to convert from NSObject with properties to NSDictionary?

Question

I ran across something that I eventually figured out, but think that there\'s probably a much more efficient way to accomplish it.

I had an object (an NSObject which

Answer 1

There are so many solutions and nothing worked for me as I had a complex nested object structure. This solution takes things from Richard and Damien but improvises as Damien's solution is tied to naming keys as class names.

Here is the header

@interface NSDictionary (PropertiesOfObject)
+(NSDictionary *) dictionaryWithPropertiesOfObject:(id)obj;
@end

Here is the .m file

@implementation NSDictionary (PropertiesOfObject)

static NSDateFormatter *reverseFormatter;

+ (NSDateFormatter *)getReverseDateFormatter {
if (!reverseFormatter) {
    NSLocale *locale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"];
    reverseFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [reverseFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'"];
    [reverseFormatter setLocale:locale];
}
return reverseFormatter;
}

 + (NSDictionary *)dictionaryWithPropertiesOfObject:(id)obj {
NSMutableDictionary *dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];

unsigned count;
objc_property_t *properties = class_copyPropertyList([obj class], &count);

for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
    NSString *key = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:property_getName(properties[i])];
    id object = [obj valueForKey:key];

    if (object) {
        if ([object isKindOfClass:[NSArray class]]) {
            NSMutableArray *subObj = [NSMutableArray array];
            for (id o in object) {
                [subObj addObject:[self dictionaryWithPropertiesOfObject:o]];
            }
            dict[key] = subObj;
        }
        else if ([object isKindOfClass:[NSString class]]) {
            dict[key] = object;
        } else if ([object isKindOfClass:[NSDate class]]) {
            dict[key] = [[NSDictionary getReverseDateFormatter] stringFromDate:(NSDate *) object];
        } else if ([object isKindOfClass:[NSNumber class]]) {
            dict[key] = object;
        } else if ([[object class] isSubclassOfClass:[NSObject class]]) {
            dict[key] = [self dictionaryWithPropertiesOfObject:object];
        }
    }

}
return dict;
}

@end