Reduce a string to a dictionary in Swift - arrays

Question

What woudl be a simple way to reduce a string like AAA:111;BBB:222;333;444;CCC:555 to a dictionary in Swift. I have the following code:
var str = "AAA:111;BBB:222;333;444;CCC:555"
var astr = str.componentsSeparatedByString(";").map { (element) -> [String:String] in
var elements = element.componentsSeparatedByString(":")
if elements.count < 2 {
elements.insert("N/A", atIndex: 0)
}
return [elements[0]:elements[1]]
}
The code above produces an Array of Dictionaries:
[["A": "111"], ["BBB": "222"], ["UKW": "333"], ["UKW": "444"], ["CCC": "555"]]
I want it to produce
["A": "111", "BBB": "222", "UKW": "333", "UKW": "444", "CCC": "555"]
but no mater what I try, since i call the map function on an Array it seems impossible to convert the nature of the map function's result.
NOTE: The dictionary in string format is described as either having KEY:VALUE; format or VALUE; format, in which case the mapping function will add the "N/A" as being the key of the unnamed value.
Any help on this matter is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Your map produces an array of dictionaries. When you want to combine them into 1, that's a perfect job for reduce:
func + <K,V>(lhs: Dictionary<K,V>, rhs: Dictionary<K,V>) -> Dictionary<K,V> {
var result = Dictionary<K,V>()
for (key, value) in lhs {
result[key] = value
}
for (key, value) in rhs {
result[key] = value
}
return result
}
var str = "AAA:111;BBB:222;333;444;CCC:555"
var astr = str
.componentsSeparatedByString(";")
.reduce([String: String]()) {
aggregate, element in
var elements = element.componentsSeparatedByString(":")
if elements.count < 2 {
elements.insert("N/A", atIndex: 0)
}
return aggregate + [elements[0]:elements[1]]
}
print(astr)
Swift has no default operator to "combine" two Dictionaries so you have to define one. Note that the + here is not commutative: dictA + dictB != dictB + dictA. If a key exist in both dictionaries, the value from the second dictionary will be used.

Answer 2

This is a work for reduce:
let str = "AAA:111;BBB:222;333;444;CCC:555"
let keyValueStrings = str.componentsSeparatedByString(";")
let dictionary = keyValueStrings.reduce([String: String]()) {
aggregate, element in
var newAggregate = aggregate
let elements = element.componentsSeparatedByString(":")
let key = elements[0]
// replace nil with the value you want to use if there is no value
let value = (elements.count > 1) ? elements[1] : nil
newAggregate[key] = value
return newAggregate
}
print(dictionary)
You can also make aggregate mutable directly:
let dictionary = keyValueStrings.reduce([String: String]()) {
(var aggregate: [String: String], element: String) -> [String: String] in
let elements = element.componentsSeparatedByString(":")
let key = elements[0]
// replace nil with the value you want to use if there is no value
let value = (elements.count > 1) ? elements[1] : nil
aggregate[key] = value
return aggregate
}
This is a functional approach, but you can achieve the same using a for iteration.

Answer 3

The reason this is happening is because map can only return arrays. If you are using this method to parse your string, then you need to convert it to a dictionary after.
var newDict = [String:String]()
for x in astr {
for (i, j) in x {
newDict[i] = j
}
}

Answer 4

The current issue with your code is that map function iterates over array containing [["key:value"],["key:value"]..] and you separate it again. But it returns ["key":"value"] which you then add to your array.
Instead you can add elements[0]:elements[1] directly to a locally kept variable which will fix your problem. Something like
finalVariable[elements[0]] = elements[1]