ios - Converting custom class object into NSData

Question

I have a custom class that I want to save into NSUserDefaults. I am told that I need to convert the class object into data in order to save it to NSUserDefaults. I found a lot of discrete string or ints to NSData examples but nothing on custom class to NSData. I know very little about the intricacies of NSData encoding etc. Any help is appreciated

EDIT: While I understand there are similar answers here, none of them are in Swift. Translating between the languages is doable, but it is extremely tedious and sometimes very counter-intuitive.

Answer 1

Here is one simple example for you:

//Custom class.
class Person: NSObject, NSCoding {
    var name: String!
    var age: Int!
    required convenience init(coder decoder: NSCoder) {
        self.init()
        self.name = decoder.decodeObjectForKey("name") as! String
        self.age = decoder.decodeObjectForKey("age") as! Int
    }
    convenience init(name: String, age: Int) {
        self.init()
        self.name = name
        self.age = age
    }
    func encodeWithCoder(coder: NSCoder) {
        if let name = name { coder.encodeObject(name, forKey: "name") }
        if let age = age { coder.encodeObject(age, forKey: "age") }

    }
}

//create an instance of your custom class.
var newPerson = [Person]()

//add some values into custom class.
newPerson.append(Person(name: "Leo", age: 45))
newPerson.append(Person(name: "Dharmesh", age: 25))

//store you class object into NSUserDefaults.
let personData = NSKeyedArchiver.archivedDataWithRootObject(newPerson)
NSUserDefaults().setObject(personData, forKey: "personData")


//get your object from NSUserDefaults.
if let loadedData = NSUserDefaults().dataForKey("personData") {

    if let loadedPerson = NSKeyedUnarchiver.unarchiveObjectWithData(loadedData) as? [Person] {
        loadedPerson[0].name   //"Leo"
        loadedPerson[0].age    //45
    }
}

Tested with playground.

Hope this helps.