Why is NSUserDefaults unwilling to save my NSDictionary?

Thomson Comer picture Thomson Comer · Feb 24, 2012 · Viewed 10.8k times · Source

I'm using KVC to serialize an NSObject and attempt to save it to NSUserDefaults, which is giving me an Attempt to insert non-property value when I try to store my NSDictionary.

Following are the properties of the object in question, MyClass:

@interface MyClass : NSObject
@property (copy,nonatomic) NSNumber* value1;
@property (copy,nonatomic) NSNumber* value2;
@property (copy,nonatomic) NSString* value3;
@property (copy,nonatomic) NSString* value4;
@property (copy,nonatomic) NSString* value5;
@property (copy,nonatomic) NSString* value6;
@property (copy,nonatomic) NSString* value7;
@property (copy,nonatomic) NSString* value8;
@end

When it is time to save MyClass it occurs here:

-(void)saveMyClass
{
  NSArray* keys = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:
                @"value1",
                @"value2",
                @"value3",
                @"value4",
                @"value5",
                @"value6",
                @"value7",
                @"value8",
                nil];
  NSDictionary* dict = [self dictionaryWithValuesForKeys:keys];
  for( id key in [dict allKeys] )
  {
    NSLog(@"%@ %@",[key class],[[dict objectForKey:key] class]);
  }
  NSUserDefaults* defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];
  [defaults setObject:dict forKey:[NSString stringWithString:kMyClassKey]];
  [defaults synchronize];
}

which produces this output:

2012-02-23 19:35:27.518 MyApp[10230:40b] __NSCFConstantString __NSCFNumber
2012-02-23 19:35:27.519 MyApp[10230:40b] __NSCFConstantString __NSCFNumber
2012-02-23 19:35:27.519 MyApp[10230:40b] __NSCFConstantString __NSCFString
2012-02-23 19:35:27.519 MyApp[10230:40b] __NSCFConstantString __NSCFString
2012-02-23 19:35:27.520 MyApp[10230:40b] __NSCFConstantString __NSCFString
2012-02-23 19:35:27.520 MyApp[10230:40b] __NSCFConstantString __NSCFString
2012-02-23 19:35:27.520 MyApp[10230:40b] __NSCFConstantString __NSCFString
2012-02-23 19:35:27.520 MyApp[10230:40b] __NSCFConstantString NSNull
2012-02-23 18:38:48.489 MyApp[9709:40b] *** -[NSUserDefaults setObject:forKey:]: Attempt to insert non-property value '{
    value1 = "http://www.google.com";
    value2 = "MyClassData";
    value3 = 8;
    value4 = "<null>";
    value5 = "http://www.google.com";
    value6 = 1;
    value7 = "http://www.google.com";
    value8 = 4SY8KcTSGeKuKs7s;
}' of class '__NSCFDictionary'.  Note that dictionaries and arrays in property lists must also contain only property values.`

As you can see, all of the objects in the dict are property list values and all of its keys are NSString*. What trivia am I lacking in order to execute this? Or should I give up and use writeToFile or similar?

Answer

Thomson Comer picture Thomson Comer · Feb 24, 2012

Props to Kevin who suggested printing the values, of course one of which is of type NSNull which is not a property list value. Thanks!

The kludgy solution to my problem - iterate over the keys of the dictionary I just produced so conveniently with dictionaryWithValuesForKeys and remove those of type NSNull. sigh

NSMutableDictionary* dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithDictionary:[self dictionaryWithValuesForKeys:keys]];
for( id key in [dict allKeys] )
{
    if( [[dict valueForKey:key] isKindOfClass:[NSNull class]] )
    {
        // doesn't work - values that are entered will never be removed from NSUserDefaults
        //[dict removeObjectForKey:key];
        [dict setObject@"" forKey:key];
    }
}