Parsing json blob field in Swift - json

Question

I am reading JSON from a web service in swift which is in the following format
[{
"id":1,
"shopName":"test",
"shopBranch":"main",
"shopAddress":"usa",
"shopNumber":"5555555",
"logo":[-1,-40,-1,-32],
"shopPath":"test"
},
{
"id":2,
"shopName":"test",
"shopBranch":"main",
"shopAddress":"usa",
"shopNumber":"66666666",
"logo":[-1,-50,-2,-2],
"shopPath":"test"
}]
I have managed to read all the strings easily but when it comes to the logo part I am not sure what should I do about it, this is a blob field in a mySQL database which represent an image that I want to retrieve in my swift UI, here is my code for doing that but i keep getting errors and not able to figure the right way to do it:
struct Brand: Decodable {
private enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
case id = "id"
case name = "shopName"
case branch = "shopBranch"
case address = "shopAddress"
case phone = "shopNumber"
case logo = "logo"
case path = "shopPath"
}
let id: Int
let name: String
let branch: String
let address: String
let phone: String
let logo: [String]
let path: String
}
func getBrandsJson() {
let url = URL(string: "http://10.211.55.4:8080/exam/Test")
URLSession.shared.dataTask(with: url!, completionHandler: {(data, response, error) in
guard let data = data, error == nil else {
print(error!);
return
}
print(response.debugDescription)
let decoder = JSONDecoder()
let classes = try! decoder.decode([Brand].self, from: data)
for myClasses in classes {
print(myClasses.branch)
if let imageData:Data = myClasses.logo.data(using:String.Encoding.utf8){
let image = UIImage(data:imageData,scale:1.0)
var imageView : UIImageView!
}
}
}).resume()
}
Can someone explain how to do that the right way I have searched a lot but no luck

Answer 1

First of all, you should better tell the server side engineers of the web service, that using array of numbers is not efficient to return a binary data in JSON and that they should use Base-64 or something like that.
If they are stubborn enough to ignore your suggestion, you should better decode it as Data in your custom decoding initializer.
struct Brand: Decodable {
private enum CodingKeys: String, CodingKey {
case id = "id"
case name = "shopName"
case branch = "shopBranch"
case address = "shopAddress"
case phone = "shopNumber"
case logo = "logo"
case path = "shopPath"
}
let id: Int
let name: String
let branch: String
let address: String
let phone: String
let logo: Data
let path: String
init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
let container = try decoder.container(keyedBy: CodingKeys.self)
self.id = try container.decode(Int.self, forKey: CodingKeys.id)
self.name = try container.decode(String.self, forKey: CodingKeys.name)
self.branch = try container.decode(String.self, forKey: CodingKeys.branch)
self.address = try container.decode(String.self, forKey: CodingKeys.address)
self.phone = try container.decode(String.self, forKey: CodingKeys.phone)
self.path = try container.decode(String.self, forKey: CodingKeys.path)
//Decode the JSON array of numbers as `[Int8]`
let bytes = try container.decode([Int8].self, forKey: CodingKeys.logo)
//Convert the result into `Data`
self.logo = Data(bytes: bytes.lazy.map{UInt8(bitPattern: $0)})
}
}
And you can write the data decoding part of your getBrandsJson() as:
let decoder = JSONDecoder()
do {
//You should never use `try!` when working with data returned by server
//Generally, you should not ignore errors or invalid inputs silently
let brands = try decoder.decode([Brand].self, from: data)
for brand in brands {
print(brand)
//Use brand.logo, which is a `Data`
if let image = UIImage(data: brand.logo, scale: 1.0) {
print(image)
//...
} else {
print("invalid binary data as an image")
}
}
} catch {
print(error)
}
I wrote some lines to decode array of numbers as Data by guess. So if you find my code not working with your actual data, please tell me with enough description and some examples of actual data. (At least, you need to show me a first few hundreds of the elements in the actual "logo" array.)

Answer 2

Replace
let logo: [String]
with
let logo: [Int]
to get errors use
do {
let classes = try JSONDecoder().decode([Brand].self, from: data)
}
catch {
print(error)
}