I'm looking for the best solution to implement this behavior:
I have an Entity called Customer and this will have only a single entry on Core Data, because the Customer will be only ONE.
What's the best solution to implement this? Is everytime check if the Entity exists before creating?
Many thanks
As mentioned, you can use for single object [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults].
But if you prefer use CoreData, write this:
Customer* customer = [Customer MR_findFirst];
if (customer != nil)
{
//do something with it
} else
{
[Customer MR_importFromObject:JSONToImport];
}
BDW:
MR_importFromObject method automatically check if exists entity with specific id (for id key it use attribute of your entity name plus "ID". (in your case "customerID") or key that named "mappedKeyName".
And if entity with this key already exist - Magical Record just update this entity.
So, if you specify this value it in your entity, just write:
[Customer MR_importFromObject:JSONToImport];
If there's only a single instance, the best solution is usually to not put it in Core Data. It gives you very little, and adds complexities like the one you're seeing. Save the necessary information in a property list, or even in user defaults.
Checking the entity exists before creating a new one is a good idea.
You can fetch all entities of your customer entity type and delete them all before adding a new one is another method.
You could also have a simple method that gets the current customer or creates one and then update all it's properties.
It sort of depends on how you get the data and what you want to happen with the related objects.
Related
I'm sorry the title may mislead you, since I'm not so good at English. Let me describe my problem as below (You may skip to the TL;DR version at the bottom of this question).
In Coredata, I design a Product entity. In app, I download products from a server. It return JSON string, I defragment it then save to CoreData.
After sometimes has passed, I search a product from that server again, having some interaction with server. Now, I call the online product XProduct. This product may not exist in CoreData, and I also don't want to save it to CoreData since it may not belong to this system (it come from other warehouse, not my current warehouse).
Assume this XProduct has the same properties as Product, but not belong to CoreData, the developer from before has designed another Object, the XProduct, and copy everything (the code) from Product. Wow. The another difference between these two is, XProduct has some method to interact with server, like: - (void)updateStock:(NSInteger)qty;
Now, I want to upgrade the Product properties, I'll have to update the XProduct also. And I have to use these two separately, like:
id product = anArrayContainsProducts[indexPath.row];
if ([product isKindOfClass:[XProduct class]] {
// Some stuff with the xproduct
}
else {
// Probably the same display to the cell.
}
TL;DR
Basically, I want to create a scenario like this:
Get data from server.
Check existed in CoreData.
2 == true => add to array (also may update some data from server).
2 == false => create object (contains same structure as NSManagedObject from JSON dictionary => add to array.
The object created in step 4 will never exist in CoreData.
Questions
How can I create an NSManagedObject without having it add to NSMangedObjectContext and make sure the app would run fine?
If 1 is not encouragement, please suggest me a better approach to this. I really don't like to duplicate so many codes like that.
Update
I was thinking about inheritance (XProduct : Product) but it still make XProduct the subclass of NSManagedObject, so I don't think that is a good approach.
There are a couple of possibilities that might work.
One is just to create the managed objects but not insert them into a context. When you create a managed object, the context argument is allowed to be nil. For example, calling insertNewObjectForEntityForName(_:inManagedObjectContext:) with no context. That gives you an instance of the managed object that's not going to be saved. They have the same lifetime as any other object.
Another is to use a second Core Data stack for these objects, with an in-memory persistent store. If you use NSInMemoryStoreType when adding the persistent store (instead of NSSQLiteStoreType), you get a complete, working Core Data stack. Except that when you save changes, they only get saved in memory. It's not really persistent, since it disappears when the app exits, but aside from that it's exactly the same as any other Core Data stack.
I'd probably use the second approach, especially if these objects have any relationships, but either should work.
I am using Entity's Object ID in order to uniquely identify local notifications and modify them. I observed that first time when I save my entity, it has following object ID:
<x-coredata:///Task/tE1C5A230-A419-42D5-AF78-3327A09D13BD2>
If I don't exit my application, and try to modify notification, object ID doesn't change and I can modify my notification.
Now, if I restart my app and try to access that entity again, it has different object ID:
<x-coredata://D6703834-ECB4-487B-84F8-330A215E16B7/Task/p13>
So I can't modify notification, as object ID for entity is different. Interesting thing is whenever I access that entity, Object ID remains same as the last one.
So my Question here is why Core data shows different object ID for the first time entity is created? When I try to access entity after opening app again for many times, the object ID (different than the first one) remains constant. I am curious to know why is it happening so?
Please note:
I know there are many posts on SO pointing out that using Object ID is not a reliable approach. Still I want to know reason that why two IDs are being shown.
the first OID is a temporary OID - a temporary id denotes objects that have not been saved yet. the 2nd id is a permanent one and is assigned to a MO AFTER it has been saved:
so...
var objectID = object.objectID
if objectID.temporaryID {
object.managedObjectContext.save() //try do catch left out
}
objectID = object.objectID
assert(objectID.temporaryID == false)
I am new to learning and understanding how Hydration works, just wanted to point that out first. I'm currently able to Hydrate Select and Insert queries without any problems.
I am currently stuck on trying to Hydrate Update queries now. In my entity I have setup the get/set options for each type of column in my database. I've found that the ObjectProperty() Hydrator works best for my situation too.
However whenever I try to update only a set number of columns and extract via the hydrator I am getting errors because all the other options are not set and are returning null values. I do not need to update everything for a particular row, just a few columns.
For example in my DB Table I may have:
name
phone_number
email_address
But I only need to update the phone_number.
$entity_passport = $this->getEntityPassport();
$entity_passport->setPrimaryPhone('5551239876');
$this->getTablePassport()->update($this->getHydrator()->extract($entity_passport), array(
'employeeid' => '1'
));
This returns an error because setName() and setEmailAddress() are not included in this update and the query returns that the values cannot be null. But clearly when you look at the DB Table, there is data already there. The data that is there does not need to be changed either, only in this example does the PrimaryPhone() number.
I've been looking and reading documentation all over the place but I cannot find anything that would explain what I am doing wrong. I should note that I am only using Zend\Db (Not Doctrine).
I'm assuming I've missed something someplace due to my lack of knowledge with this new feature I'm trying to understand.
Perhaps you don't Hydrate Update queries... I'm sort of lost / confused. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
I think you're having a fundamental misconception of hydration. A hydrator simply populates an entity object from data (hydrate) and extracts data from an entity object (extract). So there are no separate hydrators for different types of queries.
In your update example you should first retrieve the complete entity object ($entity_passport) and then pass it to the TableGateway's update method. You would retrieve the entity by employeeid, since that's the condition you're using to update. So something like this:
$entity_passport = $passportMapper->findByEmployeeId(1);
$entity_passport->setPrimaryPhone('5551239876');
$this->getTablePassport()->update($this->getHydrator()->extract($entity_passport), array(
'employeeid' => $entity_passport->getId()
));
This is assuming you have some sort of mapper layer. Otherwise you could use your passport TableGateway (I assume that's what getTablePassport() returns, no?).
Otherwise, if you think retrieving the object is too much overhead and you just want to run the query you could use just a \Zend\Db\Sql\Sql object, ie:
$sql = new \Zend\Db\Sql\Sql($dbAdapter);
$update = $sql->update('passport')
->set(array('primary_phone' => $entity_passport->getPrimaryPhone()))
->where(array('employeeid' => $employeeId));
Edit:
Maybe it was a mistake to bring up the mapper, because it may cause more confusion. You could simply use your TableGateway to retrieve the entity object and then hydrate the returned row:
$rows = $this->getTablePassport()->select(array('employeeid' => 1));
$entity_passport = $this->getHydrator($rows->current());
[...]
Edit 2:
I checked your gist and I noticed a few things, so here we go:
I see that your getTablePassport indeed does return an object which is a subclass of TableGateway. You have already set up this class for it to use a HydratingResultset. This means you don't need to do any manual hydrating when retrieving objects using the gateway.
You also already implemented a Search method in that same class, so why not just use that? However I would change that method, because right now you're using LIKE for every single column. Not only is it very inefficient, but it will also give you wrong results, for example on the id column.
If you were to fix that method then you can simply call it in the Service object:
$this->getTablePassport->Search(array('employeeid' => 1));
Otherwise you could just implement a separate method in that tablegateway class, such as
public function findByEmployeeId($employeeId)
{
return $tableGateway->select(array('employeeid' => $employeeId));
}
This should already return an array of entities (or one in this specific case). P.S. make sure to debug and check what is actually being returned when you retrieve the entity. So print_r the entity you get back from the PassportTable before trying the update. You first have to make sure the retrieval code works well.
i want to insert a previously created NSManagedObject which has some string attributes into my NSManagedObjectContext via the insertObject method. This seems to work without error but when i reload the saved object again all my string attributes are null.
I have created my entity with:
[[NSManagedObject alloc] initWithEntity:description
insertIntoManagedObjectContext:nil];
Thanks for any constructive feedback.
It is not advisable to insert a "previously created" managed object because it is much more robust to insert it during creation.
If you want to copy a managed object (i.e. "insert it again") effectively creating two instances of it in the persistent store, you will have to create a new one and then copy the all the attributes.
It is certainly more reasonable to insert the object into the context and then delete it if desired. It is just the much more intuitive and documented way to achieve what you want.
I strongly advise against creating a context-less managed object in your usage case!
I would like to separate my reference data from my user data in my Core Data model to simplify future updates of my app (and because, I plan to store the database on the cloud and there is no need to store reference data on the cloud as this is part of my application). Therefore, I've been looking for a while for a way to code a cross-store relationship using fetched properties. I have not found any example implementations of this.
I have a Core Data model using 2 configurations :
data model config 1 : UserData (entities relative to user)
data model config 2 : ReferenceData (entities relative to application itself)
I set up 2 different SQLite persistent stores for both config.
UserData config (and store) contains entity "User"
ReferenceData config (and store) contains entities "Type" and "Item".
I would like to create two single-way weak relationships as below :
A "User" has a unique "Type"
A "User" has many "Items"
Here are my questions :
How do I set up my properties?
Do I need 2 properties for each relation (one for storing Unique ID and another to access my fetched results)?
Could this weak relationship be ordered?
Could someone give me an example implementation of this?
As a follow-on to Marcus' answer:
Looking through the forums and docs, I read that I should use the URI Representation of my entity instance instead of objectID. What is the reason behind this?
// Get the URI of my object to reference
NSURL * uriObjectB [[myObjectB objectID] URIRepresentation];
Next, I wonder, how do I store my object B URI (NSURL) in my parent object A as a weak relationship? What attribute type should I use? How do I convert this? I heard about archive... ?
Then, later I should retrieve the managed object the same way (by unconvert/unarchive the URIRepresentation) and get Object from URI
// Get the Object ID from the URI
NSManagedObjectID* idObjectB = [storeCoordinator managedObjectIDForURIRepresentation:[[myManagedObject objectID] URIRepresentation]];
// Get the Managed Object for the idOjectB ...
And last but not least, shouId I declare two properties in my entity A, one for persisting of URI needs and another for retrieving direclty object B?
NSURL * uriObjectB [objectA uriObjectB];
ObjectB * myObjectB = [objectA objectB];
As you can read, I really miss some simple example to implement thes weak relationships ! I would really appreciate some help.
Splitting the data is the right answer by far. Reference data should not be synced with the cloud, especially since iCloud has soft caps on what it will allow an application to sync and store in documents.
To create soft references across to stores (they do not need to be SQLite but it is a good idea for general app performance) you will need to have some kind of unique key that can be referenced from the other side; a good old fashioned foreign key.
From there you can create a fetched property in the model to reference the entity.
While this relationship cannot be ordered directly you can create order via a sort index or if it has a logical sort then you can sort it once you retrieve the data (I use convenience methods for this that return a sorted array instead of a set).
I can build up an example but you really are on the right track. The only fun part is migration. When you detect a migration situation you will need to migrate each store independently before you build up your core data stack. It sounds tricky but it really is not that hard to accomplish.
Example
Imagine you have a UserBar entity in the user store and a RefBar entity in the reference store. The RefBar will then have a fetchedProperty "relationship" with a UserBar thereby creating a ToOne relationship.
UserBar
----------
refBarID : NSInteger
RefBar
--------
identifier : NSInteger
You can then create a fetched property on the RefBar entity in the modeler with a predicate of:
$FETCHED_PROPERTY.refBarID == identifier
Lets name that predicate "userBarFetched"
Now that will return an array so we want to add a convenience method to the RefBar
#class UserBar;
#interface RefBar : NSManagedObject
- (UserBar*)userBar;
#end
#implementation RefBar
- (UserBar*)userBar
{
NSArray *fetched = [self valueForKey:#"userBarFetched"];
return [fetched lastObject];
}
#end
To create a ToMany is the same except your convenience method would return an array and you would sort the array before returning it.
As Heath Borders mentioned, it is possible to add a sort to the NSFetchedProperty if you want but you must do it in code. Personally I have always found it wasteful and don't use that feature. It might be more useful if I could set the sort in the modeler.
Using the ObjectID
I do not recommend using the ObjectID or the URIRepresentation. The ObjectID (and therefore the URIRepresentation of that ObjectID) can and will change. Whenever you migrate a database that value will change. You are far better off creating a non-changing GUID.
The weak relationship
You only need a single value on the M side of the relationship and that stores the foreign identifier. In your object subclass you only need to implement accessors that retrieve the object (or objects).
I would go with just one store.
For storing stuff in the cloud, you will anyway have to serialize the data, either as JSON or SQL statements, or whatever scheme you prefer.
You will need a local copy of the data on the user's device, so he can access it quickly and offline. The cloud store can have only the user entity, while the local store (part of the app) can also have the reference entity.
I have a similar project with a huge reference store (20000 records) with geographic information, and user generated content ("posts"). I use a single store. When I ship the app, the "posts" entity is also defined but empty. When I update the data model I simply re-generate the whole reference store before shipping.
I see absolutely no reason to go for a cross store solution here.