Swift 3 XCode 8.3.3 XML Parsing - json

Question

I am working on trying to parse some XML data to a tableView and I keep coming up with my string being empty, thus not allowing me to populate a tableView. I have checked all over online trying to find good example on how to achieve this but everything seems to be out of date due to swift changing all the time.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<client region = "Midwest">
<person
name = "Pete Seeger"
profession = "Musician"
dob = "May 3, 1919">
<child
name = "Daniel">
</child>
<child
name = "Mika">
</child>
<child
name = "Tinya">
</child>
</person>
</client>
Next is my Client.swift file
class Client{
var clientName: String = String()
var clientProfession: String = String()
var clientDob: String = String()}
and in my ViewController I have declared these variables
var client: [Client] = []
var eName: String = String() //element Name
var cName: String = String()
var cProfession: String = String()
var cDOB: String = String()
Preceding is my didStart/didEnd/and foundCharacters
func parser(_ parser: XMLParser, didStartElement elementName: String, namespaceURI: String?, qualifiedName qName: String?, attributes attributeDict: [String : String] = [:]) {
//this finds the starting tag of <person>
eName = (elementName as NSString) as String
if eName == "person"{
print("we found start tag of person")
cName = String()
cProfession = String()
cDOB = String()
}
func parser(_ parser: XMLParser, didEndElement elementName: String, namespaceURI: String?, qualifiedName qName: String?)
{
//this looks for the end tag </person>
if eName == "person"{
print("we found End tag of person")
let client = Client() //letting the client = to w.e
print(client, "printing client in the didEndElement")
client.clientName = cName
print(cName, "This is the cName though nothing will show I bet...")
client.clientProfession = cProfession
client.clientDob = cDOB
}
func parser(_ parser: XMLParser, foundCharacters string: String)
{
let foundChar = string.trimmingCharacters(in: NSCharacterSet.whitespacesAndNewlines)
print(foundChar, "This is foundChar for foundCharacters")
if(foundChar.isEmpty){
print("its empty")
}
else{
if eName == "name"{
cName += foundChar
cProfession += foundChar
cDOB += foundChar
}
}
I am finding the beginning tags and closing tags for person, but once it gets to the foundCharacters it seems that it is returning empty. Am I overlooking something here?

Answer 1

You are looking for your data at the wrong place.
parser(_:foundCharacters:) function is getting called for text that is in between open and close tags.
For the following example XML:
<name>Pete Seeger</name>
parser(_:foundCharacters:) function will be called with foundCharacters = "Pete Seeger"
The data that you are looking for is in element's attributes. Just check the attributeDict parameter in parser(_:didStartElement:namespaceURI:qualifiedName:attributes:) function.
func parser(_ parser: XMLParser, didStartElement elementName: String, namespaceURI: String?, qualifiedName qName: String?, attributes attributeDict: [String : String] = [:]) {
//this finds the starting tag of <person>
eName = (elementName as NSString) as String
if eName == "person"{
print("we found start tag of person")
cName = attributeDict["name"] ?? ""
cProfession = attributeDict["profession"] ?? ""
cDOB = attributeDict["dob"] ?? ""
}
}
Also, if you are interesting in mapping the XML into swift objects consider XMLMapper. (uses the same technique as the ObjectMapper)
Hope this helps.