I need to combine two NSArray/NSDictionaries together - iphone

Question

I have two plist files that I'm using as datasources to create NSArray and NSDictionaries in my app.
I want the output of the CSV file to look like:
exerciseName, muscleGroup, description
Barbell Curl, Biceps, This is a bicep exercise
The problem is, I need to first combine two NSDictionaries I have. One has exerciseName and muscleName, while the other has exerciseDescription. But I need to have one array of dictionaries for each exercise obejct that has all 3 keys.
I'm using the following code to build the main NSMutableArray
if (muscleArray == nil)
{
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle]pathForResource:#"data" ofType:#"plist"];
NSMutableArray *rootLevel = [[NSMutableArray alloc]initWithContentsOfFile:path];
self.muscleArray = rootLevel;
}
NSMutableArray *arrayForSearching = [NSMutableArray array];
for (NSDictionary *muscleDict in self.muscleArray)
for (NSDictionary *excerciseDict in [muscleDict objectForKey:#"exercises"])
[arrayForSearching addObject:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
[excerciseDict objectForKey:#"exerciseName"], #"exerciseName",
[muscleDict objectForKey:#"muscleName"], #"muscleName", nil]];
self.exerciseArray = arrayForSearching;
I'm using the following code to build the NSDictionary which has the exerciseDescription key
NSString *exerciseNameString =self.exerciseName;
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"ExerciseDescriptions" ofType:#"plist"];
NSDictionary *exerciseDescription = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:path];
NSString *description = [exerciseDescription objectForKey:exerciseNameString];

Answer 1

You obviously know how to iterate through and create dictionaries, so what's the problem?
Iterate through exerciseArray and add an exercise description to each of its dictionaries. However this seems wildly inefficient and you should probably rethink the whole thing. Why not store them on disk in a ready-to-use format?
Arrays are used when the order of items matters. It doesn't seems to really matter here, so why not just keep them as NSDictionaries? If you need to access all keys in a dictionary just call allKeys
EDIT: Like this?
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"ExerciseDescriptions"
ofType:#"plist"];
NSDictionary *descriptions = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:path];
NSMutableArray *exercises = self.exerciseArray;
for (NSInteger i = 0; i < [exercises count]; i++) {
NSMutableDictionary *dict = [[exercises objectAtIndex:i] mutableCopy];
NSString *name = [dict valueForKey:#"exerciseName"];
NSString *desc = [descriptions valueForKey:name];
if (desc) {
[dict setValue:desc forKey:#"exerciseDescription"];
[exercises replaceObjectAtIndex:i withObject:dict];
}
[dict release];
}

Answer 2

I created the following project to address my need to merge two dictionaries created from plists:
https://github.com/bumboarder6/NSDictionary-merge
It works even if you have some duplicate entries between your two dictionaries or arrays and it also recursively merges so you get a merge of your whole plist even when it contains dictionaries of dictionaries of arrays of dictionaries (etc.).