Swift 3: Array to Dictionary?

I think you're looking for something like this:

extension Array {
    public func toDictionary<Key: Hashable>(with selectKey: (Element) -> Key) -> [Key:Element] {
        var dict = [Key:Element]()
        for element in self {
            dict[selectKey(element)] = element
        }
        return dict
    }
}

You can now do:

struct Person {
    var name: String
    var surname: String
    var identifier: String
}

let arr = [Person(name: "John", surname: "Doe", identifier: "JOD"),
           Person(name: "Jane", surname: "Doe", identifier: "JAD")]
let dict = arr.toDictionary { $0.identifier }

print(dict) // Result: ["JAD": Person(name: "Jane", surname: "Doe", identifier: "JAD"), "JOD": Person(name: "John", surname: "Doe", identifier: "JOD")]

If you'd like your code to be more general, you could even add this extension on Sequence instead of Array:

extension Sequence {
    public func toDictionary<Key: Hashable>(with selectKey: (Iterator.Element) -> Key) -> [Key:Iterator.Element] {
        var dict: [Key:Iterator.Element] = [:]
        for element in self {
            dict[selectKey(element)] = element
        }
        return dict
    }
}

Do note, that this causes the Sequence to be iterated over and could have side effects in some cases.


Is that it (in Swift 4)?

let dict = Dictionary(uniqueKeysWithValues: array.map{ ($0.key, $0) })

Note: As mentioned in the comment, using uniqueKeysWithValues would give a fatal error (Fatal error: Duplicate values for key: 'your_key':) if you have duplicated keys.

If you fear that may be your case, then you can use init(_:uniquingKeysWith:) e.g.

let pairsWithDuplicateKeys = [("a", 1), ("b", 2), ("a", 3), ("b", 4)] // or `let pairsWithDuplicateKeys = array.map{ ($0.key, $0) }`

let firstValues = Dictionary(pairsWithDuplicateKeys, uniquingKeysWith: { (first, _) in first })

print(firstValues)

//prints ["a": 1, "b": 2]

let lastValues = Dictionary(pairsWithDuplicateKeys, uniquingKeysWith: { (_, last) in last })

print(lastValues)

//prints ["a": 3, "b": 4]