Read JSON as a dictionary of country codes and names

Question

For a small system I need the Country Code mapped to the country name (e.g. "GB"-> "United Kingdom"). To accomplish that I read a JSON file and save it to a dictionary using swiftyJSON. Is there a cleaner and better way than I did:

fileprivate func loadNames() {
    if let filePath = Bundle.main.path(forResource: "countryNames", ofType: "json") {
        if let jsonData = NSData(contentsOfFile: filePath) {
            let json = JSON(jsonData)
            countryNames = json.dictionaryObject! as NSDictionary
        }
    }
}

The JSON looks like this:

{
"BD": "Bangladesh", 
"BE": "Belgium",
...
}

Answer 1

There's nothing wrong with what you currently have. However, a plist is another option, if this JSON is just static file.

The nice thing about the property list format is that Xcode has built-in support for editing it and Foundation has built-in support for reading it.

fileprivate func loadNames() {
    if let filePath = Bundle.main.path(forResource: "countryNames", ofType: "plist") {
        countryNames = NSDictionary(contentsOfFile: filePath)!
    }
}