Convert Array<String> to String then back to Array<String>

Question

say I have a variable

let stringArray = "[\"You\", \"Shall\", \"Not\", \"PASS!\"]"

// if I show this, it would look like this
print(stringArray)
["You", "Shall", "Not", "PASS!"]

now let's have an Array< String>

let array = ["You", "Shall", "Not", "PASS!"]

// if I convert this into string
// it would roughly be equal to the variable 'stringArray'

if String(array) == stringArray { 
    print("true")
} else {
    print("false")
}

// output would be
true

now say what should I do to convert variable 'stringArray' to 'Array< String>'

This question shows that there is no eval operation in Swift, so you could write a little parser. — Gabriel
– Gabriel, Commented Nov 28, 2016 at 10:41
so I'd have to regex the hell out of it? that's the only way I'm thinking of doing this right now.. sadly — Zonily Jame
– Zonily Jame, Commented Nov 28, 2016 at 10:44
@vadian no this isn't JSON because JSON is [key:value, key:value] whereas this is just [value, value, value] or am I wrong? — Zonily Jame
– Zonily Jame, Commented Nov 28, 2016 at 10:45

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:13:53Z

1

The answer would be to convert the string using NSJSONSerialization

Thanks Vadian for that tip

let dataString = stringArray.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)
let newArray = try! NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData(dataString!, options: []) as! Array<String>

for string in newArray {
    print(string)
}

voila there you have it, it's now an array of strings

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:13

CommunityBot

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answered Nov 28, 2016 at 10:53

Zonily Jame

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4 Comments

vadian Over a year ago

mutableContainers is completely useless in Swift, only to read the data it's not needed anyway.

Zonily Jame Over a year ago

@AhmadF I should wait for 2 days to accept my own answer

Zonily Jame Over a year ago

@vadian what would be the best option to use then? (optimization wise)

vadian Over a year ago

No options ([]).

Alexey Chekanov · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-24 17:22:17Z

0

A small improvement for Swift 4.

Try this:

// Array of Strings
let array: [String] = ["red", "green", "blue"]
let arrayAsString: String = array.description
let stringAsData = arrayAsString.data(using: String.Encoding.utf16)
let arrayBack: [String] = try! JSONDecoder().decode([String].self, from: stringAsData!)

For other data types respectively:

// Set of Doubles
let set: Set<Double> = [1, 2.0, 3]
let setAsString: String = set.description
let setStringAsData = setAsString.data(using: String.Encoding.utf16)
let setBack: Set<Double> = try! JSONDecoder().decode(Set<Double>.self, from: setStringAsData!)

answered May 24, 2018 at 17:22

Alexey Chekanov

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