Dictionary within a dictionary (as a plist)

I have a plist that is set up like:

As you can see, I have a dictionary within a dictionary: each parent node has children nodes, which themselves are a dictionaryy with images and badges associated with them.

The part I'm stuck at is how to turn this into a datasource for a NSOutlineView..

At the moment I have this:

NSString *paths = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"navigationItems" ofType:@"plist"]; 
navigationItems = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:paths];

NSArray *parents = [navigationItems allKeys开发者_运维技巧];

for (NSString *parent in parents) {
    SourceListItem *parentItem = [SourceListItem itemWithTitle:parent identifier:parent];

    NSArray *children = [parent allKeys];

    NSLog(@"%@", children);
}

I was going to then do a for loop with children, but the problem is is that parent is a NSString and you can't for loop over a NSString..

So what should I do?

Many thanks

If I'm reading your code correctly, parent is a key for a dictionary containing child dictionaries in your plist. You need to grab the dictionary that parent refers to in navigationItems before accessing the embedded child dictionary data. For example:

NSString *paths = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"navigationItems" ofType:@"plist"]; 
navigationItems = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:paths];

NSArray *parents = [navigationItems allKeys];

for (NSString *parent in parents) {
    SourceListItem *parentItem = [SourceListItem itemWithTitle:parent identifier:parent];

    NSDictionary *parentData = [navigationItems objectForKey:parent];
    NSArray *children = [parentData allKeys];

    NSLog(@"%@", children);
}

Remember to access the dictionary data for each of the children in the same manner when you loop through their keys.