Check if an object exist in a NSMutableArray of NSDictionary

Question

i have an NSMutableArray that contains some NsDictionary with NSstring for differents Keys. Somethings like:

NSDictionary *ExempleDictionary = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:[Date objectAtIndex:sender.tag],@"DATE",[Time objectAtIndex:sender.tag],@"TIME", nil];

I'd like to check if a particular object with DATE=xxx && TIME=xxx exist in the Array.

Any idea?!

Answer 1

You can do the search with NSPredicate :

NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF.DATE=%@ AND SELF.TIME=%@", dateVal, timeVal];
NSArray *filteredArray = [myArray filteredArrayUsingPredicate:predicate];

filteredArray contains an NSArray of all NSDictionary objects matching the specified date and time condition. You can retrieve the matching objects by iterating the filtered array.

Answer 2

You can use NSArray's containsObject: (if you have a reference to the dictionary laying around) or indexOfObjectIdenticalTo: (if you want to check if an element identical to the one you are passing -but not necessarily the same object- is in the array). Both are explained in the docs:

containsObject

indexOfObjectIdenticalTo