Display JSON as List in ViewController (Not in TableView) - iphone

Question

I am producing a JSON string that I need to parse out and display onto the page. My JSON string outputs information about the contents of a CD like this:
[{"song_name":"Song 1","artist":"John","price":"$1"},
{"song_name":"Song 2","artist":"Anna","price":"$2"},
{"song_name":"Song 3","artist":"Ryan","price":"$3"}]
I would like to display the contents in my viewController in a list format displaying the song_name, artist, and price. I do not want to use a tableView to display this information, but would rather just have a list displayed. How might I go about doing this? I would assume that I need to use NSJSONSerialization, but have only used that for a tableView in the past. Thank you!

Answer 1

In addition to other answers, you can use only one label, just create NSMutableString (for dynamicly adding tracks info) with #"\n" between tracks info, pass it to label.text and set UILabel's property numberOfLines to 0

Answer 2

Follow these steps:
Parse the JSON and store the key-value pair(NSDictionary of CDs) in an NSArray (say infoArray)
Add a UIScrollview as a subview on your viewController's view.
Allocate UILabels dynamically, depending on infoArray count. Looking at your data I believe you can initialize labels with static frames i.e your y can remain static.
Add the text from the infoArray on this label.
Still, I would suggest use UITableView only. It is much simpler and a better approach

Answer 3

You make an array of dictionaries using NSJSONSerialization indeed, then you parse this array one by one and create a view of every dictionary. You're probably best of using a method for this:
-(UIView *) listView: (NSString *)songName andArtist:(NSString *)artist andPrice:(NSString *)price andIndex:(int)viewIndex {
//create your view here and do anything you want
UIView *subView = [[UIView alloc] init] autoRelease];
subView.frame = CGRectMake(0, viewIndex * 70, self.view.frame.width, 70);
//add labels and other stuff
// return the view
return subView;
}
The you add it to the current view by setting different Y values so they appear underneath each other by using the viewIndex of the former method... So if you have an array it goes something like this:
for (int i = 0; i < [array count]; i++) {
NSDictionary *dict = [array objectAtIndex:i];
NSString *songName = [dict valueForKey:#"song_name"];
NSString *artist = [dict valueForKey:#"artist"];
NSString *price = [dict valueForKey:#"price"];
UIView *tempView = [self listView:songName andArtist:artist andPrice:price andIndex:i];
[self.view addSubView:tempView];
}
You have to add it all to a scrollview otherwise you will run into the problem of to many rows on the page. Google for UIScrollView if you don't know how.
But I would recommend against this approach.. Tableviews are there with a reason. They are made for this stuff. Because the also provide for scrolling, drawing and refreshing. If you can, use them!