How to convert json to object?

First, do you use JSON Parser? (if not, i'd recommend using SBJson).

Second, why not create an initWithDictionary init method in your custom class that returns self object?

These are all good frameworks for JSON parsing to dictionaries or other primitives, but if you're looking to avoid doing a lot of repetitive work, check out http://restkit.org . Specifically, check out https://github.com/RestKit/RestKit/blob/master/Docs/Object%20Mapping.md This is the example on Object mapping where you define mapping for your Teacher class and the json is automagically converted to a Teacher object by using KVC. If you use RestKit's network calls, the process is all transparent and simple, but I already had my network calls in place and what I needed was to convert my json response text to a User object (Teacher in your case) and I finally figured out how. If that's what you need, post a comment and I'll share how to do it with RestKit.

Note: I will assume the json is output using the mapped convention {"teacher": { "id" : 45, "name" : "Teacher McTeacher"}}. If it's not this way, but instead like this {"id" : 45, "name" : "Teacher McTeacher"} then don't worry ... object mapping design doc in the link shows you how to do this...a few extra steps, but not too bad.

This is my callback from ASIHTTPRequest

- (void)requestFinished:(ASIHTTPRequest *)request {
    id<RKParser> parser = [[RKParserRegistry sharedRegistry] parserForMIMEType:[request.responseHeaders valueForKey:@"Content-Type"]]; // i'm assuming your response Content-Type is application/json
    NSError *error;
    NSDictionary *parsedData = [parser objectFromString:apiResponse error:&error];
    if (parsedData == nil) {
        NSLog(@"ERROR parsing api response with RestKit...%@", error);
        return;
    }

    [RKObjectMapping addDefaultDateFormatterForString:@"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ" inTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneWithAbbreviation:@"UTC"]]; // This is handy in case you return dates with different formats that aren't understood by the date parser

    RKObjectMappingProvider *provider = [RKObjectMappingProvider new];

    // This is the error mapping provider that RestKit understands natively (I copied this verbatim from the RestKit internals ... so just go with it
    // This also shows how to map without blocks
    RKObjectMapping* errorMapping = [RKObjectMapping mappingForClass:[RKErrorMessage class]];
    [errorMapping mapKeyPath:@"" toAttribute:@"errorMessage"];
    [provider setMapping:errorMapping forKeyPath:@"error"];
    [provider setMapping:errorMapping forKeyPath:@"errors"];

    // This shows you how to map with blocks
    RKObjectMapping *teacherMapping = [RKObjectMapping mappingForClass:[Teacher class] block:^(RKObjectMapping *mapping) {
        [mapping mapKeyPath:@"id" toAttribute:@"objectId"];
        [mapping mapKeyPath:@"name" toAttribute:@"name"];
    }];

    [provider setMapping:teacherMapping forKeyPath:@"teacher"];

    RKObjectMapper *mapper = [RKObjectMapper mapperWithObject:parsedData mappingProvider:provider];
    Teacher *teacher = nil;
    RKObjectMappingResult *mappingResult = [mapper performMapping];
    teacher = [mappingResult asObject];

    NSLog(@"Teacher is %@ with id %lld and name %@", teacher, teacher.objectId, teacher.name);
}

You can obviously refactor this to make it cleaner, but that now solves all my problems.. no more parsing... just response -> magic -> Object