how to retrive data from a user pointer on Parse using swift

Question

On Parse I have users with Facebook profile and Email login profile. So I want to bury for users data in my twitter-like app.

In my "messages" class on Parse I have column "sender" that contains pointers to parse users.

I just want to retrive and show the name of users in class "messages" contained in the column "sender" wich contains pointers to PFUsers of which I need data for keys

• "first_name"
• "last_name"
• "profile_picture"

How can I retrive their data like name and image in order to show them in a tableview?

these are the declarations of my arrays:

var sendersArray : [String] = []
var picturesArray : [NSData] = []

maybe I could use something like this tuple, but I can't understand how to grab data from pointers

for user in list  {

    let firstName = "fist_name"
    let lastName = "last_name"
    let oProfileImage = NSData() //"image_profile" as! NSData

    otherUsers.append((oName: firstName, oLastName: lastName, oImageProfle: oProfileImage))

}

version - 1:

I started with printing the whole pf object

//******************************************************

func theSearch() {



    let theSearchQuery = PFQuery(className: "Messages")


    theSearchQuery.findObjectsInBackgroundWithBlock({
        (objects : [AnyObject]?, error : NSError?) -> Void in

        for object in objects!  {

            let theName = object.sender!

            print(object)
            print(theName)

            sendersArray.append(theName)

            let profilePicture = object["profile_pic"] as! PFFile
            picturesArray.append(profilePicture)

        }

        self.tableView.reloadData()

    })

}
//*******************************************************

version - 2:

then, found this solution, but still, doesn't

func theSearch() {



    let theSearchQuery = PFQuery(className: "Messages" )

     theSearchQuery.includeKey("sender")

    theSearchQuery.findObjectsInBackgroundWithBlock({
        (objects : [AnyObject]?, error : NSError?) -> Void in

        for object in objects!  {

            let theName = object.sender!["first_name"] as? String

            print(object)
            print(theName)

            sendersArray.append(theName)

            let profilePicture = object["profile_pic"] as! PFFile
            picturesArray.append(profilePicture)

        }

        self.tableView.reloadData()

    })

}

errors:

seems to be a problem with sender, maybe I shouldn't use it

thanks in advance

Answer 1

  let theName = object.objectForKey("sender")!.objectForKey("first_name") as! String

Complete Code:

   func theSearch() {



let theSearchQuery = PFQuery(className: "Messages")

 theSearchQuery.includeKey("sender")
 theSearchQuery.findObjectsInBackgroundWithBlock({
    (objects : [AnyObject]?, error : NSError?) -> Void in

    for object in objects!  {

        let theName = object.objectForKey("sender")!.objectForKey("first_name") as! String

        print(object)
        print(theName)

        self.sendersArray.append(theName)

        let profilePicture = object["profile_picture"] as! PFFile
        self.picturesArray.append(profilePicture)

    }

    self.tableView.reloadData()

   })

}

Also, your picturesArray should be of type PFFile, like this:

 var picturesArray = [PFFile]()

NOT NSData. change that at the top of your class.

-----EDIT------: If you want to retrieve an image from a parse query, do this:

1) at the top of your class, declare the following arrays to store the results:

    // your images will be stored in the file array
    var fileArray = [PFFile]()

  // your first and last names will be stored in String Arrays:
  var firstNameArray = [String]()
  var lastNameArray = [String]()

2) perform the query:

   let query1 = PFQuery(className: "_User")
   query1.orderByDescending("createdAt")
   query1.findObjectsInBackgroundWithBlock({
      (objects : [AnyObject]?, error : NSError?) -> Void in
         if error == nil {
           for x in objects! {
             let firstName = x.objectForKey("first_name") as! String
             let lastName = x.objectForKey("last_name") as! String
             self.firstNameArray.append(firstName)
             self.lastNameArray.append(lastName)

            if x.objectForKey("profile_picture") as? PFFile == nil { 
               print("do nothing cause it's nil")
            }
           else {
              let file:PFFile = x.objectForKey("profile_image") as! PFFile
              self.fileArray.append(file)
            }


            } 
            self.tableView.reloadData()

         }

    })

Note I am using Swift 2 and Xcode 7. Syntax is slightly different in Xcode 6.4 and Swift 1.2.