NSDictionary with ordered keys

ios objective-c cocoa nsdictionary
Andy Bourassa picture Andy Bourassa · Dec 17, 2008 · Viewed 72.8k times · Source

I have an NSDictionary (stored in a plist) that I'm basically using as an associative array (strings as keys and values). I want to use the array of keys as part of my application, but I'd like them to be in a specific order (not really an order that I can write an algorithm to sort them into). I could always store a separate array of the keys, but that seems kind of kludgey because I'd always have to update the keys of the dictionary as well as the values of the array, and make sure they always correspond. Currently I just use [myDictionary allKeys], but obviously this returns them in an arbitrary, non-guaranteed order. Is there a data structure in Objective-C that I'm missing? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to more elegantly do this?

Answer

Abizern picture Abizern · Dec 17, 2008

The solution of having an associated NSMutableArray of keys isn't so bad. It avoids subclassing NSDictionary, and if you are careful with writing accessors, it shouldn't be too hard to keep synchronised.

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