I have a small app that I'm working on to learn CoreData. These are the entities for CoreData.
extension Person {
@NSManaged var firstName: String?
@NSManaged var lastName: String?
@NSManaged var age: NSNumber?
@NSManaged var personToBook: NSSet?
}
extension Books {
@NSManaged var bookName: String?
@NSManaged var bookISBN: String?
@NSManaged var bookToPerson: Person?
}
The app is a list of people. Belonging to each person in the list can be one more more books.
I am easily able to sort the people.
let fetchRequest = NSFetchRequest(entityName: "Person")
let fetchSort = NSSortDescriptor(key: "lastName", ascending: true)
fetchRequest.sortDescriptors = [fetchSort]
fetchedResultsController = NSFetchedResultsController(fetchRequest: fetchRequest, managedObjectContext: context, sectionNameKeyPath: nil, cacheName: nil)
fetchedResultsController.delegate = self
do {
try fetchedResultsController.performFetch()
}
catch let error as NSError {
print("Unable to perform fetch: \(error.localizedDescription)")
}
What I am having a tough time working out is how to sort the Books in alphabetical order, like I am the people. When I tap on a person in the people list, I segue to a UITableView
that contains a list of books. In the prepareForSegue, I pass in the selected person, the context, and the NSFetchedResultsController
that I am using in the person list.
override func prepareForSegue(segue: UIStoryboardSegue, sender: AnyObject?) {
let vc = segue.destinationViewController as! BooksController
vc.person = fetchedResultsController.objectAtIndexPath(selectedIndex) as! Person
vc.context = self.context
vc.fetchedResultsController = self.fetchedResultsController
}
The UITableView
is populated by person.personToBook.
override func numberOfSectionsInTableView(tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
return 1
}
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
return (person.personToBook?.count)!
}
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier("BooksCell", forIndexPath: indexPath)
let book = person.personToBook?.allObjects[indexPath.row] as! Books
cell.textLabel?.text = book.bookName!
return cell
}
Books are added to the correct person in this manner:
let entity = NSEntityDescription.entityForName("Books", inManagedObjectContext: self.context)
let bookInstance = Books(entity:entity!, insertIntoManagedObjectContext: self.context)
bookInstance.bookName = alertController.textFields?[0].text
bookInstance.bookISBN = alertController.textFields?[1].text
self.person.mutableSetValueForKey("personToBook").addObject(bookInstance)
do {
try self.context.save()
self.tableView.reloadData()
}
catch let error as NSError {
print("Error saving a book \(error.localizedDescription)")
}
personToBook is an NSSet, and this is not sorted. I thought about using another NSFetchedResultsController to pull the list of books out, but there is nothing unique that is identifying the books as belonging to a specific user. For instance, I could have two people with the same name of John Doe. Because of this, I'd have no way to set the
NSPredicate` so that it would only pull in books for one of the John Does.
One though that I had is that I could add some sort of UniqueID to the Person entity, like I'd do in SQL. This would ensure that I could get the Books records for only the correct person. I've been told that I should not do this in CoreData. That leads me to believe that there must be some way to sort the items in the to-many part of this.
What are the ways that I can sort my Books data?
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