Proper formatting for Array within JSON from iOS using NSURLSessionDataTask

Question

I'm trying to do a POST to a RESTful Web API and having issues with the format on the httpBody. NSJSONSerialization is creating this:

{
  "UserId" : "ThisIsMe",
  "Locations" : "[\n  \"1\"\n]",
  "TypeOfValue" : "3",
  "SomeTypeID" : 22,
  "Title" : "asdfadsf",
  "Description" : "Description"
}

But what I need is this:

{
  "UserId" : "ThisIsMe",
  "Locations" : ["1"],
  "TypeOfValue" : "3",
  "SomeTypeID" : 22,
  "Title" : "asdfadsf",
  "Description" : "Description"
}

In order to put this together "as is" I had to take an NSArray run NSJSONSerialization on it then append that to an NSDictionary and then call NSJSONSerialization on that. So there is a problem obviously with the double serialization, but if I pass in the array with the NSDictionary it fails...help please.

Answer 1

You should have an NSDictionary whose keys are all strings and whose values are NSString, NSNumber or NSArray (containing NSString) instances. Then, use NSJSONSerialisation to convert that dictionary representation into a JSON data representation and you will get what you want.