Convert array of custom object to String in swift4

Question

I am new to Swift and have an issue converting an array of custom object, to String.

This is my response class Tickets

public struct Tickets: Codable {
        public let name: String!
        public let status: String!
        public let department: String!
    }

After the webservice call i get following response and it would be mapped to Tickets class. Now, I have an array of "Tickets" as [Tickets] described below.

"tickets": [
    {
      "name": "d5b5d618-8a74-4e5f",
      "status": "VALID",
      "department": "IT"
    },
    {
      "name": "a58f54b5-9420-49b6",
      "status": "INVALID",
      "department": "Travel"
    }
  ]

Now, can I convert an array of [Tickets] to String? If so, how? Also, how to get it back as [Tickets] from a class of String .

I want to store it into UserDefaults after converting it to String, and retrieve it later

Answer 1

First of all:

Never declare properties or members in a struct or class as implicit unwrapped optional if they are supposed to be initialized in an init method. If they could be nil declare them as regular optional ( ? ) otherwise as non-optional (Yes, the compiler won't complain if there is no question or exclamation mark).

Just decode and encode the JSON with JSONDecoder() and JSONEncoder()

let jsonTickets = """
{"tickets":[{"name":"d5b5d618-8a74-4e5f","status":"VALID","department":"IT"},{"name":"a58f54b5-9420-49b6","status":"INVALID","department":"Travel"}]}
"""

public struct Ticket: Codable {
    public let name: String
    public let status: String
    public let department: String
}

do {
    let data = Data(jsonTickets.utf8)
    let tickets = try JSONDecoder().decode([String:[Ticket]].self, from: data)
    print(tickets)
    let jsonTicketsEncodeBack = try JSONEncoder().encode(tickets)
    jsonTickets == String(data: jsonTicketsEncodeBack, encoding: .utf8) // true
} catch {
    print(error)
}