CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphoneiosobjective-cxcodemapkit
Brandon
Brandon

Reputation: 2171

iOS JSON Array and MapKit

I am trying to map a JSON array using the MapKit. I can get a single point on the map with the code below, but I have dozens of pins I need to mark, and I have a JSON array prepared. My code for a single point is below.

In my .h file:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import <MapKit/MapKit.h>

@interface MapViewController : UIViewController {

MKMapView *mapView;
NSData *data;

}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet MKMapView *mapView;

@end

In my .m file:

NSData *data = @"[{"id":"1","name":"Jiffy Lube","lat":"21.306","lon":"-157.861"},    
{"id":"2","name":"Bills
Oil","lat":"21.301","lon":"-157.863"},{"id":"3","name":"Auto Zone","lat":"21.307","lon":"-
157.862"}]";

// parse the JSON into a NSArray

NSError *error;
NSArray *array = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:data
                                                 options:0
                                                   error:&error];

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4665

Answers (1)

Rob
Rob

Reputation: 437381

Your JSON is an array of dictionary items. So you can just retrieve the full array via NSJSONSerialization, and then iterate through the dictionary entries in the resulting array.

First, you originally said you had JSON like the following:

[{"id":"1","name":"Jiffy Lube","lat":"21.306","lon":"-157.861"},    
{"id":"2","name":"Bills Oil","lat":"21.301","lon":"-157.863"},
{"id":"3","name":"Auto Zone","lat":"21.307","lon":"-157.862"}]

So, if that's sitting in a file, "test.json" that you've included in your bundle, you could load it as so:

// load the data from local file

NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"test" ofType:@"json"];
NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:path];

If you have this on a web server, you'd retrieve it like so:

// load the data from web server

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://insert.your.server/and/url/here/test.json"];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[NSURLConnection sendAsynchronousRequest:request queue:[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, NSData *data, NSError *connectionError) {
    // use NSData here
}];

Assuming you loaded your JSON feed into a NSData object called data, you could just do something like:

// parse the JSON into a NSArray

NSError *error;
NSArray *array = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:data 
                                                 options:0
                                                   error:&error];
if (error != nil)
{
    // handle the error as you want
}

// a few variables to be used as we iterate through the array of results

CLLocationCoordinate2D location;                         // coordinates of the annotation
NSMutableArray *newAnnotations = [NSMutableArray array]; // an array in which we'll save our annotations temporarily
MKPointAnnotation *newAnnotation;                        // the pointer to the annotation we're adding

// iterate through the array, adding an annotation to our our array of new annotations

for (NSDictionary *dictionary in array)
{
    // retrieve latitude and longitude from the dictionary entry

    location.latitude = [dictionary[@"lat"] doubleValue];
    location.longitude = [dictionary[@"lon"] doubleValue];

    // create the annotation

    newAnnotation = [[MKPointAnnotation alloc] init];
    newAnnotation.title = dictionary[@"name"];
    newAnnotation.coordinate = location;

    // add it to our array
    //
    // incidentally, generally I just add it to the mapview directly, but
    // given that you have a didAddAnnotationViews, we'll just build up 
    // an array and add them all to the map view in one step after we're 
    // done iterating through the JSON results

    [newAnnotations addObject:newAnnotation];

    // clean up

    [newAnnotation release];
}

// when done, add the annotations

[self.mapView addAnnotations:newAnnotations];

Upvotes: 7

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