valueForKey only returns memory address and not actually value

Question

 NSDictionary *topic = [spaces objectAtIndex:i];
 NSInteger topicid = [topic valueForKey:@"TOPICID"];

when I run this and print out topic I get the following:

Printing description of topic:
<CFDictionary 0xdb2a70 [0x30307a00]>{type = mutable, count = 2, capacity = 12, pairs = (
    10 : <CFString 0xdb5300 [0x30307a00]>{contents = "TOPICID"} = 29
    12 : <CFString 0xdb53a0 [0x30307a00]>{contents = "TOPICNAME"} = <CFString 0xdb5360 [0x30307a00]>{contents = "zzzzzzzz"}
)}

However, when I look at topicid, the value is always a memory address. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Maybe the value is actually an NSNumber. You would get this using:

NSInteger topicid = [[topic objectForKey:@"TOPICID"] intValue];

Answer 2

Dictionaries can only contain objects, not primitives. Whatever is stored in there (as Xetius suggested) is probably wrapped in some form. It would appear that TOPICID is an NSString.

Answer 3

In the array output, you can see topicID is a string value (NSString). So, you would want to set it as Xetius describes - but not because it is an NSNumber, because NSString has an "intValue" method.