Instantiating Custom Class from NSDictionary

Question

I have a feeling that this is stupid question, but I\'ll ask anyway...

I have a collection of NSDictionary objects whose key/value pairs correspond to a cus

Answer 1

There is no allKeys on NSObject. You'll need to create an extra category on NSObject like below:

NSObject+PropertyArray.h

@interface NSObject (PropertyArray)
- (NSArray *) allKeys;
@end

NSObject+PropertyArray.m

#import 

@implementation NSObject (PropertyArray)
- (NSArray *) allKeys {
    Class clazz = [self class];
    u_int count;

    objc_property_t* properties = class_copyPropertyList(clazz, &count);
    NSMutableArray* propertyArray = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:count];
    for (int i = 0; i < count ; i++) {
        const char* propertyName = property_getName(properties[i]);
        [propertyArray addObject:[NSString  stringWithCString:propertyName encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    }
    free(properties);

   return [NSArray arrayWithArray:propertyArray];
}
@end

Example:

#import "NSObject+PropertyArray.h"

...

MyObject *obj = [[MyObject alloc] init];
obj.a = @"Hello A";  //setting some values to attributes
obj.b = @"Hello B";

//dictionaryWithValuesForKeys requires keys in NSArray. You can now
//construct such NSArray using `allKeys` from NSObject(PropertyArray) category
NSDictionary *objDict = [obj dictionaryWithValuesForKeys:[obj allKeys]];

//Resurrect MyObject from NSDictionary using setValuesForKeysWithDictionary
MyObject *objResur = [[MyObject alloc] init];
[objResur setValuesForKeysWithDictionary:objDict];