Storing ints in a Dictionary

Ethan Mick picture Ethan Mick · Nov 10, 2009 · Viewed 9.1k times · Source

As I understand, in Objective-C you can only put Objects into dictionaries. So if I was to create a dictionary, it would have to have all objects. This means I need to put my ints in as NSNumber, right?

SOo...

NSNumber *testNum = [NSNumber numberWithInt:varMoney];


NSMutableDictionary *dictionary = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
[dictionary setObject:@"OMG, Object 1!!!!" forKey:@"1"];
[dictionary setObject:@"Number two!" forKey:@"2"];
[dictionary setObject:testNum forKey:@"3"];


NSNumber *retrieved = [dictionary objectForKey:@"3"];
int newVarMoney = [retrieved intValue];

Where varMoney is an int that has been declared earlier. My question is, is there a better way to store "int" in a dictionary than putting it into a NSNumber?

Thanks!

Edit: 04/25/13

It's been a long time since I asked this question. For people stumbling on it in the future, there are easier ways to do this with the Apple LLVM Compiler 4.0, which has been default in Xcode for a bit. (ARC)

NSMutableDictionary *dictionary = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
[dictionary setObject:@1337 forKey:@"1"];

That's it, use the @1337 Syntax to quickly create NSNumber objects. Works with Variables, so my above could become:

[dictionary setObject:@(varMoney) forKey:@"3"];

or

dictionary[@"mykey"] = @1337;

Simpler.

Answer

Carl Norum picture Carl Norum · Nov 10, 2009

You are correct, NSNumber is the normal way to handle this situation. You can use NSValue or NSDecimalNumber, too.