Writing an app (for my class) which states user input on state names and that particular state's capital. - objective-c

Question

The app is supposed to work like this:
The user inputs, in a text field, a particular state. In another text field, the user inputs a capital for that state.
After the user hits the "add" button, the key/value pair is sent into both dictionaries, one for pairing State to Capital, and another for comparing Capital to State.
So here's my problem:
All that being said, and the app programmatically creating a button in a scrollView, the State or whichever data was typed into the first field, is represented.
That particular button is supposed to, upon clicking, switch the name of that button to the paired Capital or State, in whichever case. I cannot, for the life of me, find out how to code this into my app.
My Header File:
IBOutlet UIScrollView *scrollView; // for scrollable State / Capital view
IBOutlet UITextField *stateField; // text field for entering state
IBOutlet UITextField *capitalField; // text field for entering capital
// stores the website and passwds
NSMutableDictionary *stateCapital;
NSMutableDictionary *capitalState;
// stores the Buttons representing the passwds
NSMutableArray *buttons;
// stores the info buttons for editing existing passwd
NSMutableArray *label;
// location of the file in which capital are stored
NSString *filePath;
My Implementation:
To add a state
// make the keyboard disappear
[stateField resignFirstResponder];
[capitalField resignFirstResponder];
NSString *key = stateField.text; // get the text in tagField
NSString *value = capitalField.text; // get the text in queryField
// test if either field is empty
if (value.length == 0 || key.length == 0)
return; // exit from the method
if ([stateCapital valueForKey:key] == nil) // test if the website already exists
[self addNewButtonWithTitle:key]; // if not, add a new button
[stateCapital setValue:value forKey:key]; // add a new entry in tags
stateField.text = nil; // clear tagField of text
capitalField.text = nil; // clear queryField of text
[stateCapital writeToFile:filePath atomically:NO]; //save the data
To add a Capital (just reverse the process)
// make the keyboard disappear
[stateField resignFirstResponder];
[capitalField resignFirstResponder];
NSString *key = capitalField.text; // get the text in tagField
NSString *value = stateField.text; // get the text in queryField
// test if either field is empty
if (value.length == 0 || key.length == 0)
return; // exit from the method
if ([capitalState valueForKey:key] == nil) // test if the website already exists
[self addNewButtonWithTitle:key]; // if not, add a new button
[capitalState setValue:value forKey:key]; // add a new entry in tags
stateField.text = nil; // clear tagField of text
capitalField.text = nil; // clear queryField of text
[capitalState writeToFile:filePath atomically:NO]; //save the data
I'm pretty new to programming, and am taking a Summer course, it's extremely compact.
My professor is in and out of the lab, but offers only hints on how to achieve the success of this application. I'm trying to find out via the web and my book on how to do this, but have no success as of yet.

Answer 1

Generally, you want individual IBOutlets for each UI widget that's part of your interaction. (I assume you're using Storyboard…) You have outlets for UITextFields, but your buttons are in an NSMutableArray. This is almost surely not what you want. You also don't have any methods written that handle the extraction of the data from the text fields into the dictionaries you're keeping. So, you need to wire a button to an IBAction method. This method will extract the text from the UITextField IBOutlets (self.stateField.text) and save to the NSMutableDictionary. Be sure your IBOutlets are connected properly to your view controller code and that the buttons are properly wired to your IBAction method. Those keywords should get you on the right track to solving the question.
Related: I see a lot of info about "websites" and "passwds" in your code. This leads me to think you've copy-pasted some other code and are trying to shoehorn your assignment into this code or else this used to be a different assignment and your instructor gave you a starting point that was poorly modified.
Bonus free editorial — It's not 100% clear if the instruction to keep two dictionaries with the same data in reverse order is inherent to the assignment, it's overkill IMHO since you have the allKeysForObject: method to get the key that corresponds to the object being searched. So, NSDictionary *capitalsDictionary = #{#"Texas": #"Austin"} can give you Austin for the key Texas with capitalsDictionary[#"Texas"] and can give you Texas for the value Austin with [capitalsDictionary allKeysForObject:#"Austin"][0] (The [0] is because allKeys… returns an array. If you check this before inserting a new capital, you can be sure that there will only be one. More than one would be a mistake unless somehow more than one state's capital city would be the same name, which is not the case in the USA, but might be elsewhere. By using allKeysForObject: you'd be able to handle this situation but with the multiple dictionaries, you wouldn't because a key can correspond to only one value. You could make that value an array, but it would still have the same problem as allKeys…