MGTwitterEngine and iPhone - 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 = "Twitter";
"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.