Converting NSObject to NSDictionary

Question

Hello I a class of type NSObject:

ProductDetails *details = [[ProductDetails alloc] init];
details.name = @"Soap1";
details.color = @"Red";
details.quantity = 4;

I want to pass the "details" object to a dictionary.

I did,

NSDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:details forKey:@"details"];

I am passing this dict to another method which performs a check on JSONSerialization:

if(![NSJSONSerialization isValidJSONObject:dict])

And I am getting a crash on this check. Am I doing anything wrong here? I know that the details I am getting is a JSON object and I am assigning it to the properties in my ProductDetails class.

Please help me. I am a noob in Objective-C.

I now tried:

NSError* error;
NSDictionary* json = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:(NSData*)details options:kNilOptions error:&error];

All I need here is an easy way to convert details to NSData.

I noticed that I have an array inside my object may be thats why all the ways I tried is throwing an exception. However since this question is becoming to big, I have started an another question thread for it where I have displayed the data I am getting inside the object - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19081104/convert-nsobject-to-nsdictionary

Answer 1

This may well be the easiest way to achieve it. Do import #import <objc/runtime.h> in your class file.

#import <objc/runtime.h>

ProductDetails *details = [[ProductDetails alloc] init];
details.name = @"Soap1";
details.color = @"Red";
details.quantity = 4;
NSDictionary *dict = [self dictionaryWithPropertiesOfObject: details];
NSLog(@"%@", dict);

//Add this utility method in your class.
- (NSDictionary *) dictionaryWithPropertiesOfObject:(id)obj
{
    NSMutableDictionary *dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];

    unsigned count;
    objc_property_t *properties = class_copyPropertyList([obj class], &count);

    for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
        NSString *key = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:property_getName(properties[i])];
        [dict setObject:[obj valueForKey:key] forKey:key];
    }

    free(properties);

    return [NSDictionary dictionaryWithDictionary:dict];
}