Well, I stayed up a little longer and thanks to you Scriptable I was able to figure it out.
Basically all I did was create a new variable:
var statuscheck: Int!
And then after the "if let parseJSON = json {" statement I cast the "status" as an Int like this:
self.statuscheck = (parseJSON["status"]! as! NSString).integerValue
Then after the line beneath the "dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()":
let okAction = UIAlertAction(title: "Ok", style: UIAlertActionStyle.Default) { action in
I did the check:
if (self.statuscheck == 200) {
let next = self.storyboard?.instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("ProtectedViewController") as! ProtectedViewController
self.presentViewController(next, animated: true, completion: nil)
}
This seems to work great now.
Thanks again for all your help Scriptable. You definitely pointed me in the right direction!