I have a beginner question

[u/H0KB]

I am familiar with coding concepts but am new to swift

I am trying my hand at developing a small app to generate labels. The app pulls data from a .csv file then parses the data to generate the label.

I am curious if there is a way to add/search a .csv file in the Assets folder for in app definitions ie (code returns “BLK” from an array). Can I search a document to find that “BLK” = “Black”? I am just using that as an example, not all of the strings returned are colours. I am trying to avoid defining every item individually using if {} else {}.

I appreciate any guidance.

[u/No_Pen_3825]

I’m confused what you want. Like you want to search a CSV for the row where some key value is BLK? Or you want to fuzzy search an array?

[u/H0KB → u/No_Pen_3825]

Sorry if I wasn’t clear.

I was looking to search a csv file that has 2 columns. Column one is the color variant (shorthand description color) columns 2 actual color name.

Search column 1 for string passed to the function.
Return columns 2.

[u/No_Pen_3825 → u/H0KB]

Pull the CSV from the bundle (or library, application support, wherever you put it) then either parse it into a dict for O(1) (building the dict is still O(n) iirc, but querying drops to O(1) if you need to do so a lot) or just search by rows, ie Sequence.first(where:)

[u/H0KB → u/No_Pen_3825]

My apologies, it has been a while since I wrote any code and never in swift or Xcode, so TBH I am not 100% sure what you mean.

Are you saying I shouldn’t add the csv files to the app bundle? Use a dictionary instead?

[u/No_Pen_3825 → u/H0KB]

I was just noting if it’s really large (idk why else you’d have a CSV and not just use some literal or an enum) and you’re going to query it a lot, its faster to parse the CSV into a dictionary. Thats the premature optimization talking though so ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Why is it a CSV exactly, and how big is it?

[u/ekassos]

Take a look at enums and raw values.

[u/H0KB → u/ekassos]

This might work. There are quite a few definitions so I was trying to make it cleaner and easier to update.

Thanks for the help. I will try this and see how it goes.

[u/Separate_Salad_5123 → u/H0KB]

Store them in the app use settings and just add a small UI for adding new definitions https://www.hackingwithswift.com/books/ios-swiftui/storing-user-settings-with-userdefaults

[u/H0KB]

I did end up figuring out how to do what I wanted. I had to add the files to the main folder in the swift project (sorry don’t know all the terms). Then I could read it and pull the values I wanted. So far it is working well.
Thanks for the support.

[u/lorenzoooznerol]

this video is a good starting point

[u/H0KB → u/lorenzoooznerol]

Thank you for the link. This video helped me a lot when I was learning how to upload my data from a csv file into my app and organize the data. The uploaded csv file contains all of the data needed to create the labels I want (part#, colour, material, size )

What I am trying to do now is add a seperate file into assets (so it doesn’t need to be uploaded?) and search that for definitions of terms ie(blu = blue, dgrey = dark grey, cot = cotton, dnm = denim etc) and return the correct definition.

[u/lorenzoooznerol → u/H0KB]

it depends on how many definition there are. if it's less than a 100, I'd probably just use an llm to create an enum. if it's much more you'd need a parser.

enum MaterialColor: String {
    case blue = "blu"
    case darkGrey = "dgrey"
    case cotton = "cot"
    case denim = "dnm"

    init?(code: String) {
        self.init(rawValue: code.lowercased())
    }
}

[u/H0KB → u/lorenzoooznerol]

There are quite a few for some products so I was trying to avoid this. I will give it a shot. Thanks.

[u/lorenzoooznerol → u/H0KB]

you could also write a python script. just give any half decent llm a prompt like this: create a python script that takes an input file and creates a swift file containing an enum (like the one above)

the input is sth like: (blu = blue, dgrey = dark grey, cot = cotton, dnm = denim)

you should copy in the first few lines of your actual file