xcode/iphone custom class xml parcer - iphone

Question

I have a custom class and I set specific properties of that class based on the xml node name coming in.
if([elementName isEqualToString:#"strap"])
{
parcelObj.strap = nodeContent;
}
else if([elementName isEqualToString:#"owner"])
{
parcelObj.owner=nodeContent;
}
etc. etc...
I wanna know if I can lose the else if's all together and do this (somehow)
parcelObj."elementName" = nodeContent;
Make sense? I am not sure how to pass the "elementName" as the property ya know?

Answer 1

This may be a bit more info then you are looking for, but check out my custom xml parser JHXMLParser class. It parses an xml file and creates an array of dictionaries. Each dictionary has the xml tags name as a key for the text value inside the tag. So, if the xml data looked like this:
<PHOTOS>
<PHOTO>
<ID>177</ID>
<THUMB><![CDATA[http://www.blah.com/thumbs/489650795.jpg]]></THUMB>
<IMAGE><![CDATA[http://www.blah.com/images/489650795.jpg]]></IMAGE>
</PHOTO>
<PHOTO>
<ID>178</ID>
<THUMB><![CDATA[http://www.blah.com/thumbs/489650798.jpg]]></THUMB>
<IMAGE><![CDATA[http://www.blah.com/images/489650798.jpg]]></IMAGE>
</PHOTO>
</PHOTOS>
It would create an array with 2 dictionary elements. The first dictionary would have 3 keys ("ID", "THUMB", "IMAGE") and 3 values ("117", "http://www.blah.com/thumbs/489650795.jpg", and "http://www.blah.com/images/489650795.jpg") respectively.
Here are the important methods (_key, _previousTag, _currentTag, _elementText, and _parsedData are ivars and _key is a string that would be #"PHOTO" for the above XML):
- (void)parserDidStartDocument:(NSXMLParser *)parser {
_parsedData = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
}
- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didStartElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qualifiedName attributes:(NSDictionary *)attributeDict {
_currentTag = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:elementName];
if ([elementName isEqualToString:_key]) {
NSMutableDictionary *tmpDict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
[_parsedData addObject:tmpDict];
[tmpDict release];
}
}
- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string {
if ([_previousTag isEqualToString:_currentTag]) {
[_elementText appendString:[string stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]]];
} else {
_elementText = [[NSMutableString alloc] initWithString:[string stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]]];
}
if (![_previousTag isEqualToString:_currentTag]) {
_previousTag = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:_currentTag];
}
}
- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didEndElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName {
if ([_previousTag isEqualToString:elementName]) {
[[_parsedData lastObject] setObject:_elementText forKey:elementName];
} else {
_previousTag = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:#""];
}
}