How to Iterate Through Dictionary on iOS Shortcuts

by Rian

I’ve talked about using dictionary in Shortcuts to handle data. If you started using one in a custom shortcut, there is one odd bit that may not be immediately obvious if you try to loop through the dictionary; it loops with the entire dictionary as the Repeat Item. It defeats the purpose of using iterating through dictionary if it cannot parse the dictionary for iteration.

The quick solution to this problem is not to run the loop on the dictionary itself, but some other values, such as keys, to loop through. Because a dictionary value can be a list, I do recommend looping through keys instead.

1. Add “Get Dictionary Value” action, and set “Value” to “All Keys” for the dictionary in question.
2. Add “Repeat with Each” action, and set the input to dictionary value from previous action.
3. (opt.) Add “Get Dictionary Value” action inside the Repeat, then set the key to “Repeat Item” to fetch the values.
   

It becomes more obvious once it’s setup why it works now. Though, I’m not so sure why it hadn’t work without it. A dictionary entry must be a pair of a key and a value, and to loop through dictionary’s pairs would not be impossible —and not sure what would be the potential use case of avoiding parsing for iteration. Regardless, this is a simple fix where adding two actions will let a shortcut to loop through a dictionary.