Swift: Flatten an array of dictionaries to one dictionary

what do the brackets mean?

This, along with a comma instead of a colon, should provide the first clue: brackets mean that you get an array of tuples. Since you are looking for a dictionary, not an array, this tells you that you need to convert the sequence of tuples (key-value pairs) to a single dictionary.

How do I achieve the desired result?

One way to do it would be using reduce, like this:

let flattenedDictionary = arrayOfDictionaries
    .flatMap { $0 }
    .reduce([String:String]()) { (var dict, tuple) in
        dict.updateValue(tuple.1, forKey: tuple.0)
        return dict
    }

Updating @dasblinkenlight's answer for Swift 3.

"var" in the parameters has been deprecated, but this approach worked fine for me.

let flattenedDictionary = arrayOfDictionaries
    .flatMap { $0 }
    .reduce([String:String]()) { (dict, tuple) in
        var nextDict = dict
        nextDict.updateValue(tuple.1, forKey: tuple.0)
        return nextDict
    }

With Swift 5, Dictionay has a init(_:uniquingKeysWith:) initializer. init(_:uniquingKeysWith:) has the following declaration:

init<S>(_ keysAndValues: S, uniquingKeysWith combine: (Value, Value) throws -> Value) rethrows where S : Sequence, S.Element == (Key, Value)

Creates a new dictionary from the key-value pairs in the given sequence, using a combining closure to determine the value for any duplicate keys.

---

The two following Playground sample codes show how to flatten an array of dictionaries into a new dictionary.

let dictionaryArray = [["key1": "value1"], ["key1": "value5", "key2": "value2"], ["key3": "value3"]]

let tupleArray: [(String, String)] = dictionaryArray.flatMap { $0 }
let dictonary = Dictionary(tupleArray, uniquingKeysWith: { (first, last) in last })

print(dictonary) // prints ["key2": "value2", "key3": "value3", "key1": "value5"]

let dictionaryArray = [["key1": 10], ["key1": 10, "key2": 2], ["key3": 3]]

let tupleArray: [(String, Int)] = dictionaryArray.flatMap { $0 }
let dictonary = Dictionary(tupleArray, uniquingKeysWith: { (first, last) in first + last })
//let dictonary = Dictionary(tupleArray, uniquingKeysWith: +) // also works

print(dictonary) // ["key2": 2, "key3": 3, "key1": 20]