MGTwitterEngine and iPhone

Question

I downloaded MGTwitterEngine and added to my iPhone project. It's connecting and getting statues I can tell from dumping them into an NSLog. But, I can't figure out how how I need to parse the calls so I can add them to a table. They are returned as an NSString and look like this:

      {
    "created_at" = 2009-07-25 15:28:41 -0500;
    favorited = 0;
    id = 65;
    source = "<a href=\"http://twitter.com/\">Twitter</a>";
    "source_api_request_type" = 0;
    text = "The wolf shirt strikes again!! #sdcc :P http://twitpic.com/blz4b";
    truncated = 0;
    user =         {
        "created_at" = "Sat Jul 25 20:34:33 +0000 2009";
        description = "Host of Tekzilla on Revision3 and Qore on PSN. Also, a geek.";
        "favourites_count" = 0;
        "followers_count" = 0;
        following = false;
        "friends_count" = 0;
        id = 5;
        location = "San Francisco";
        name = "Veronica Belmont";
        notifications = false;
        "profile_background_tile" = false;
        "profile_image_url" = "http://blabnow.com/avatar/Twitter_10350_new_twitter_normal.jpg";
        protected = 0;
        "screen_name" = Veronica;
        "statuses_count" = 2;
        "time_zone" = UTC;
        url = "http://www.veronicabelmont.com";
        "utc_offset" = 0;
    };

Anybody used this that can tell me how everyone else uses it in their project?

Thanks

Answer 1

What you are seeing in your console is an NSLog of an NSDictionary and not an NSString. From Matt Gemmell's MGTwitterEngine Readme :

The values sent to these methods are all NSArrays containing an NSDictionary for each status or user or direct message, with sub-dictionaries if necessary (for example, the timeline methods usually return statuses, each of which has a sub-dictionary giving information about the user who posted that status).

So whatever object you passed to your NSLog() statement is actually a dictionary and you can access the fields with a call to:

NSString *createdAtDate = [record valueForKey:@"created_at"];
NSString *source = [record valueForKey:@"source"];
// etc...

Where record is the object. Keep in mind that the user field is a sub-dictionary. You access it this way:

NSDictionary *userDict = [record valueForKey:@"user"];
NSString *name = [userDict valueForKey:@"name"];
NSString *location = [userDict valueForKey:@"location"];
// etc...

You could actually use the NSArray returned in the request as your table view's data source and then just extract the one you need by the index in your -cellForRowAtIndexPath table view delegate.

Best Regards,

Answer 2

For anyone else who might find their way here, here's one way to parce the results. (From a newbie, so don't count of this being the standard or even correct way)

The key (pun intended :D) is to use the dictionary in the appropriate delegate method. Check out Matt Long's example code in another thread on the topic.

To parce something like this:

[myTwitterEngine getSearchResultsForQuery:@"#ironsavior"];

His example is this, in the delegate method:

- (void)searchResultsReceived:(NSArray *)searchResults 
                   forRequest:(NSString *)connectionIdentifier
{
    if ([searchResults count] > 0)
    {
        NSDictionary *result = [searchResults objectAtIndex:0];

        NSString *fromUser = [result valueForKey:@"from_user"];
        NSString *fromUserID = [result valueForKey@"from_user_id"];
        // ...
        NSString *text = [result valueForKey@"text"];

        NSLog(@"User %@(%@): %@", fromUser, fromUserID, text);
    }
}

This would give you a very simple message that goes "User username(userid): message".

I'm not sure what the best way to proceed would be, I'm thinking returning a dictionary or an array that you could use elsewhere in your implementation. Or just return the original array and parse it elsewhere.

Check out that other thread for more info.