Encoding a dictionary with arrays as values

[niazoff]

Hi, I'm trying to encode a model called Order that has a property called foods that's a dictionary with arrays as values: [FoodType : [AnyFood]]. The keys, FoodType, are enum values with String as their raw value. FoodType also conforms to Codable. When I encode an Order object though with FirebaseEncoder().encode(order) and then setValue(orderData), I get something weird in my Firebase Realtime Database. What I would expect is a child whose path would be /order/foods/salad with enumerated children for each value of the AnyFood array. What happens though is this:

It makes a child /foods with the first item in the foods dictionary has its key 'salad' as /0 and the array value for salad as /1 with the enumerated children as the array's values. How can I encode order in such a way where the value for the path /order/foods/salad/0 would be the first item in the salad key value's array. And then when I would have a coffee key it would map to /order/foods/coffee? (The FoodType keys should be children keys themselves in the database with there children being the values in the [AnyFood] array)

[alickbass]

That is the way Codable works when they key in the dictionary is enum. That is a swift's limitation for now. You will have to map it to [String: [AnyFood]] yourself. For more background refer to this page

[niazoff]

Oh wow thanks! Do you know if this is fixed in Swift 4.2?

[niazoff]

Also would it decode back the proper way when doing so using FirebaseDecoder?

[alickbass]

So the results you got were expected. You need to manually map [FoodType : [AnyFood]] to [String: [AnyFood]] in func encode(to encoder: Encoder) throws and the [String: [AnyFood]] to [FoodType : [AnyFood]] in init(from decoder: Decoder) throws. It will not work automatically