iPhone Developer : Using Core Data for a Table Data Source

Core Data on the iPhone works closely with table views. The NSFetchedResultsController class includes features that simplify the integration of Core Data objects with table data sources. As you can see in the following list, many of the fetched results class’s properties and methods are designed for table support.

• Index path access— The fetched results class offers object-index path integration in two directions. You can recover objects from a fetched object array using index paths by calling objectAtIndexPath:. You can query for the index path associated with a fetched object by calling indexPathForObject:. These two methods work with both sectioned tables and those tables that are flat—that is, that only use a single section for all their data.

• Section key path— The sectionNameKeyPath property links a managed object attribute to section names. This property helps determine which section each managed object belongs to. You can set this property directly at any time or you initialize it when you set up your fetched results controller.

  Recipe 19-1 uses an attribute named section to distinguish sections, although you can use any attribute name for this key path. For this example, this attribute uses the first character of each object name to assign a managed object to a section. Set the key path to nil to produce a flat table without sections.

• Section groups— Recover section subgroups with the sections property. This property returns an array of sections, each of which stores the managed objects whose section attribute maps to the same letter.

  Each returned section implements the NSFetchedResultsSectionInfo protocol. This protocol ensures that sections can report their objects and numberOfObjects, their name, and an indexTitle, that is, the title that appears on the quick reference index optionally shown above and at the right of the table.

• Index titles— The sectionIndexTitles property generates a list of section titles from the sections within the fetched data. For Recipe 19-1, that array includes single letter titles. The default implementation uses the value of each section key to return a list of all known sections.

  Two further instance methods, sectionIndexTitleForSectionName: and sectionForSectionIndexTitle:atIndex:, provide section title lookup features. The first returns a title for a section name. The second looks up a section via its title. Override these to use section titles that do not match the data stored in the section name key.

The code in this recipe recovers data from the fetched results using index paths, as shown in the method that produces a cell for a given row and the method that tints the navigation bar with the color from the selected row.

Each method used for creating and managing sections is tiny. The built-in Core Data access features reduce these methods to one or two lines each. That’s because all the work in creating and accessing the sections is handed over directly to Core Data. The call that initializes each fetched data request specifies what data attribute to use for the sections. Core Data then takes over and does the rest of the work.

self.fetchedResultsController = [[NSFetchedResultsController alloc]
    initWithFetchRequest:fetchRequest
    managedObjectContext:self.context
    sectionNameKeyPath:@"section" cacheName:@"Root"];

Caching reduces overhead associated with producing data that’s structured with sections and indices. Multiple fetch requests are ignored when the data has not changed, minimizing the cost associated with fetch requests over the lifetime of an application. The name used for the cache is completely arbitrary. Either use nil to prevent caching or supply a name in the form of an NSString. The snippet above uses "Root", but there’s no reason you can’t use another string.

Recipe 1. Building a Sectioned Table with Core Data

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { // Retrieve or create a cell UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"basic cell"]; if (!cell) cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:@"basic cell"] autorelease]; // Recover object from fetched results NSManagedObject *managedObject = [self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]; cell.textLabel.text = [managedObject valueForKey:@"name"]; UIColor *color = [self getColor:[managedObject valueForKey:@"color"]]; cell.textLabel.textColor = ([[managedObject valueForKey:@"color"] hasPrefix:@"FFFFFF"]) ? [UIColor blackColor] : color; return cell; } - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { // When a row is selected, color the navigation bar accordingly NSManagedObject *managedObject = [self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]; UIColor *color = [self getColor:[managedObject valueForKey:@"color"]]; self.navigationController.navigationBar.tintColor = color; } #pragma mark Sections - (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView { // Use the fetched results section count return [[self.fetchedResultsController sections] count]; } - (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section { // Return the count for each section return [[[self.fetchedResultsController sections] objectAtIndex:section] numberOfObjects]; } - (NSArray *)sectionIndexTitlesForTableView:(UITableView *)aTableView { // Return the array of section index titles return self.fetchedResultsController.sectionIndexTitles; } - (NSString *)tableView:(UITableView *)aTableView titleForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section { // Return the title for a given section NSArray *titles = [self.fetchedResultsController sectionIndexTitles]; if (titles.count <= section) return @"Error"; return [titles objectAtIndex:section]; } - (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView sectionForSectionIndexTitle:(NSString *)title atIndex:(NSInteger)index { // Query the titles for the section associated with an index title return [self.fetchedResultsController.sectionIndexTitles indexOfObject:title]; }