I've Googled and searched SO for this with no straightforward results. It seems I have a fundamental misunderstanding of the following from Apple's documentation:
An archive can store an arbitrarily complex object graph. The archive
preserves the identity of every object in the graph and all the
relationships it has with all the other objects in the graph. When
unarchived, the rebuilt object graph should, with few exceptions, be
an exact copy of the original object graph.
Assume that I have an NSMutableArray that is a collection of Person objects. Each Person object implements initWithCoder and encodeWithCoder. Further, any given Person may have an NSMutableArray of objects (similarly coding-compliant) of Task.
My understanding is that there is a way to archive, thus triggering a cascading serialization of arbitrary depth, depending on implementation of the coding protocol. So in my view controller, I have a willEnterBackground that does:
data = [NSKeyedArchiver archivedDataWithRootObject:self.people];
// persist to NSUserDefaults
and I have a viewDidLoad that does:
// read from NSUserDefaults
self.people = [NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithData:data];
This all happens, but two things:
The initWithCoder and encodeWithCoder in the objects contained by the people array are never called.
Unsurprisingly, the result is that self.people is an NSMutableArray of size 0. Surprisingly, the data that is unarchived is 252 bytes long, which looks about right.
Suggestions? Hints?
Even though you implemented those 2 methods, did you declare your Person class to be in the protocol ?
Related
So long story short, there's a discrepancy between the output of a NSMutableDictionary's contents and the result of calling allValues on the same object. Below is some debugger output after inspecting the object which demonstrates my problem: (made generic of course)
(lldb) po self.someDict.allKeys
<__NSArrayI 0xa5a2e00>(
<SomeObject: 0xa5a2dc0>,
<SomeObject: 0xa5a2de0>
)
(lldb) po self.someDict.allValues
<__NSArrayI 0xa895ca0>(
0.5,
0.5
)
(lldb) po self.someDict
{
"<SomeObject: 0xa5a2dc0>" = (null);
"<SomeObject: 0xa5a2de0>" = (null);
}
So as we can see, the actual output of the NSMutableDictionary contains null values for both its entries, but the contents of .allValues contains the proper data. These three outputs were taken at the same time in execution.
I'm not sure why this is happening, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that I'm encoding/decoding the object which this dictionary is a property of using CoreData. I believe I'm doing this properly:
[aCoder encodeObject:self.someDict forKey:#"someDict"];
and to decode
self.someDict = [aDecoder decodeObjectForKey:#"someDict"];
The weird thing is that if I inspect the dictionary before it ever gets encoded, it is still in the state described at the beginning of the post, so this is why I'm doubtful the CoreData actions are screwing with the contents.
As always, please don't hesitate to request additional information.
EDIT: The problem was as answered below. I was using a custom class which didn't cooperate with isEqual, so my solution was to change the storage and structure of my logic, which made using a Dictionary unnecessary.
I have not been able to duplicate the problem using NSString as keys and NSNumber as values. I suspect that your custom class does not properly implement hash and/or isEqual. Specifically, the results from those two methods must be consistent, meaning that if isEqual returns true, then the hash values for the two objects must be identical.
You also need to ensure that your class implements NSCopying properly and that a copy is equal to the original.
As a general rule, don't use custom objects for dictionary keys. Just use strings and be done with it.
As user3386109 points out, custom objects must properly implement the -hash and -isEqual methods in order to be used as dictionary keys, and even then, custom objects don't work correctly for dictionary keys for things like key/value coding.
I have an NSMutableArray called selectedUsers to which I am adding objects using a method called addUser. The objects being added are most often of type PLManagedUser (a core data managed object) although sometimes the object could be a string. In any case, if the array already contains the object, I do not want to add it to the array. Here is the code:
- (void)addUser:(id)user withTitle:(NSString *)title {
if (![_selectedUsers containsObject:user]) {
[_selectedUsers addObject:user];
}
}
I have noticed that if I try to add the same user back to back using the above method, the containsObject catches it, and duplicates are not added. However, if I add the same user (with the same memory address) after having added other objects in between, the duplicate will be added.
I am printing the contents of the array each time I add something to confirm that the duplicate objects are in the array.
My question is, is there any obvious reason why containsObject isn't consistently working here?
You need to provide the ability for an object to identify itself as equal to another object of the same class, and to do this you implement the isEqual: and hash methods.
Having said that, the explanation in your question is the opposite of what I would have expected.
I created a simple database and put in NSUserDefaults. My database is NSMutableArray which has dictionaries and arrays inside in it. When I create NSMutableArray from NSUSerDefaults I can't add any objects to my mutable objects inside my NSMutableArray. Here is my code:
NSMutableArray *arrayOne = [NSMutableArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:[self createEditableCopyOfIfNeededWithFileName:#"Form.plist"]];
NSUserDefaults *ayarlar = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];
[ayarlar setObject:arrayOne forKey:#"form"];
NSMutableArray *arrayTwo = [NSMutableArray arrayWithArray:[[ayarlar objectForKey:#"form"] mutableCopy]];
[[[arrayTwo objectAtIndex:0] objectForKey:#"itemlar"] addObject:#"hop"];
And here is the error:
'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: '-[__NSCFArray insertObject:atIndex:]: mutating method sent to immutable object'
How can I make this work? Thank you everyone.
NSUserDefaults is not the right place to store your data. First of all it should only be used for very small amounts of data, such as settings. And secondly it always returns immutable objects, even if you set mutable ones. Making a mutable copy of your first array doesn’t help because only the array will be mutable. Everything that is inside that array isn’t touched by the mutableCopy method and stay immutable.
You should use the NSPropertyListSerialization class to read and write your data from a file. On reading you can pass options controlling the mutability of the read objects. There you will want to pass NSPropertyListMutableContainers or NSPropertyListMutableContainersAndLeaves.
With the first all your containers (arrays and dictionaries that is) will be mutable. With the latter also the leaves (that is NSString and NSData objects) will be mutable.
Depending on how big your data set can get you probably should use a real database or Core Data instead.
NSUserDefaults never returns mutable objects.
Your code is performing every way of creating a mutable array you can think of (i.e. you're creating a mutable copy of something you just created a mutable copy of), but, you're only dealing with the root container item - not the inner / leaf items. So, when you do objectForKey:#"itemlar"] on your mutable array, you're getting an immutable object back.
To make it work, you'll need to write your own method that iterates and recurses through the array creating mutable copies at all levels.
Alternatively, you could look at a 3rd party option like this which digs under the hood of NSUserDefaults to generate mutable containers.
NSUserDefaults, and property lists in general, do not record mutability. When an object is re-created from the file it can be constructed either as a mutable or immutable object (for types which have the option, such as arrays). Unfortunately NSUserDefaults doesn't give you an API call to obtain an immutable object directly.
Two options you have are (a) create a mutable copy of the object returned by NSUserDefaults or (b) store the object yourself as a property list in a separate file - that way you can read it back as mutable directly.
For (b) read Apple's docs - it shows how mutability is handled.
You can directly do by using method insertObject.
In place of
[[[arrayTwo objectAtIndex:0] objectForKey:#"itemlar"] addObject:#"hop"];
use this,
[arrayTwo insertObject:#"hop" atIndex:0];
This will work for as i have tested it's also working finr after that you can make it as immutable object as NSARRAY and save it to NSUSERDEFAULTS.
I have an array of cached objects that I retrieve using NSCoding and NSKeyedUnarchiver. These have have many properties.
I now need to check if the contents of an object I create is identical to any of the cached objects contents in the array.
I of course cannot check if the references to the objects are equal using containsObject, but I can check if their contents are identical. I know how to achieve the end result, but what's best practice in this case? I would want it to take as little time as possible.
And keep in mind that the objects are only identical if all their properties match.
Thank you for your time!
Implement the isEqual: and hash methods on the class. The implementation of isEqual: should compare all properties.
Once you have those two methods properly implemented you can make use of collection methods such as NSArray containsObject: or NSArray indexOfObjects:, etc.
I need to temporarily store the content of a NSManagedObject into a dictionary. Because core data has its own memory management procedures, I don't want to keep any strong pointers to the NSManagedObject's fields, only the values are of interest at this point (values are passed between view controllers, the MOCs are different). I can't create weak pointers either because I want to control when the memory reclaim is done.
I tried a few things, all failed or did not fit the purpose.
a duplicate [[myNSMO alloc] initWithEntity:[NSEntityDescription entityForName:entity inManagedObjectContext:myNSMO.managedObjectContext] insertIntoManagedObjectContext:nil];
It's working, but does not fit into my app design (without getting into details)
generate a NSDictionary from the NSManagedObject, using [myNSMO dictionaryWithValuesForKeys:<#(NSArray *)#>]. That's not ok because it returns a dictionary with the addresses of the NSManagedObject fields.
create a NSDictionary populating each key-value using a copyWithZone, like this
[myDictionary setObject:[myNSMO.field copyWithZone:nil] forKey:#"Key"];
Doesn't work either, I still get the field address...
Manually enter each field with
[myDictionary setObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",myNSMO.field ] forKey:#"Key"];
It's fine this time, I do get new memory allocation. But that's highly time consuming to code this manually...
Any chance that someone found clever way to do that? the reason option 1) did not work is because I use the dictionary as a queue. I first store a copy of the object, then pop the entry out when required. A copy of that particular dictionary entry is then returned to the asking method. The problem is that I can't create a copy of an NSManagedObject that was created using [[...] insertIntoManagedObjectContext:nil];
Any solutions?
It's safe to keep strong pointers to the fields of a managed object in most senses — relationships are special but the actual Foundation objects of dates, strings and numbers are ordinary objects that'll stay in memory if you have a strong reference.
That being said, to create a dictionary copy containing all the properties of an entity you could do something like:
NSArray *properties = [[object entity] properties];
NSMutableDictionary *dictionaryRepresentation = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
for(NSAttributeDescription *attribute in properties)
{
// we want only actual attributes, not relationships
// or fetched properties
if([attribute isKindOfClass:[NSAttributeDescription class]])
{
[dictionaryRepresentation
setObject:[object valueForKey:attribute.name]
forKey:attribute.name];
}
}
So you're using the fact that managed objects expose a description of their entities which includes a list of properties, whittling those properties down to just the attributes, then using key-value coding to fetch the current value of each property and finally inserting it into the dictionary.
If for some reason you did want copies of the properties — though, as I say, there's absolutely no reason to do so — you'd copy (and autorelease if you're not using ARC) each property when inserting it into the dictionary.