Filtering EKEvent with NSPredicate

0
votes

I have an NSArray with EKEvents, that I need to filter down to a clean list.

I'm looking for an NSPredicate that filters out all Events of which the 'title' attribute, which is an NSString, starts with a numeric value.

So, I want to take out those Titles that look like '123Something' and '8somethingElse' but keep 'Anything123' and of course 'specificallyThisOne'.

I rely on your smartness, and, since I really don't have a clue on where to get started, an explanation would also highly appreciated!

1
iosnspredicate

1 Answers

3
votes

NSPredicate supports regular expression which provides the most convenient way to filter strings.

This is an example with a custom array of dictionaries, it's supposed to work also with an array of EKEvent.

The regex filters all strings which

  • start ^
  • not with one or more digits \\D+
  • and ignore the rest of the string .*$.

Since you didn't mention the language this is Swift:

let array = [["name" : "alpha", "title" : "123Something"],
             ["name" : "beta", "title" : "8somethingElse"],
             ["name" : "gamma", "title" : "Anything123"],
             ["name" : "delta", "title" : "specificallyThisOne"]]


let regex = "^\\D+.*$"
let predicate = NSPredicate(format:"title MATCHES %@", regex)

let filteredArray = (array as NSArray).filteredArrayUsingPredicate(predicate)
print(filteredArray)

It's even possible without NSPredicate using the native filter function

let filteredArray =  array.filter { $0["title"]!.rangeOfString(regex, options: .RegularExpressionSearch) != nil }