Swift and CoreData / Data Storage

Question

I'm just learning Objective-C / Cocoa Touch and Core Data. So, what are the new possibilities to implement data storage in iOS App Projects that are written in pure Swift? I really like the language, but as far as I know all core data methods are written in Objective-C. So will the core data classes/methods converted to Swift-Code automatically or will we have to mix up Objective-C Code for Core data and Swift-Code for everything else?

Solution 1

This is how I implemented core data.

A couple of really important notes:

• You have to add this to your NSManagedObject class:

  @objc(MyObject)

• You have to add the entity name to your default configuration class in the .xcdatamodel (picture included)

• You can't simply make an NSManagedObject.

  var myObject : MyObject = MyObject()
  

You have to do this:

let appDelegate: AppDelegate = UIApplication.sharedApplication().delegate as AppDelegate
let context: NSManagedObjectContext = appDelegate.managedObjectContext
let entityName: String = "MyObject"
let myEntityDescription = NSEntityDescription.entityForName(entityName, inManagedObjectContext: context)
var myObject = MyObject(entity: myEntityDescription, insertIntoManagedObjectContext: context)

Here is my NSManagedObject. I included two fetch methods as well as a class method for object construction. You may notice that I am taking advantage of the new enum system so that I can easily access my entity names and entity attributes

import UIKit
import CoreData

enum MyObjectPropertyList { 
    case name
    func description() -> String {
        switch self {
        case .name:
            return "name"
        }
    }
}

@objc(MyObject)
class MyObject: NSManagedObject {

    @NSManaged var name: String

    //
    //// CREATE CLASS OBJECT
    //

    class func createMyObject (propertyName:MyObjectPropertyList, value:String, context: NSManagedObjectContext) -> MyObject? {
        if !value.isEmpty {
            let propertyType = propertyName.description()

            let entityName = "MyObject"
            let request : NSFetchRequest = NSFetchRequest(entityName: entityName)
            request.returnsObjectsAsFaults = false
            request.predicate = NSPredicate(format: "\(propertyType) = %@", value)
            var error: NSError? = nil
            var matches: NSArray = context.executeFetchRequest(request, error: &error)

            if (matches.count > 1) {
                // handle error
                return matches[0] as? MyObject
            } else if matches.count ==  0 {
                let entityDescription = NSEntityDescription.entityForName(entityName, inManagedObjectContext: context)
                var myObject : MyObject = MyObject(entity: entityDescription, insertIntoManagedObjectContext: context)
                myObject.name = value
                return myObject
            }
            else {
                println(matches[0])
                return matches[0] as? MyObject
            }
        }
        return nil
    }
}

    //
    //// FETCH REQUESTS
    //

    func myGeneralFetchRequest (entity : CoreDataEntities,
                              property : MyObjectPropertyList,
                               context : NSManagedObjectContext) -> AnyObject[]?{

        let entityName = entity.description()
        let propertyName = property.description()

        let request :NSFetchRequest = NSFetchRequest(entityName: entityName)
        request.returnsObjectsAsFaults = false
        let sortDescriptor : NSSortDescriptor = NSSortDescriptor(key: propertyName, ascending: true)
        request.sortDescriptors = [sortDescriptor]
        var error: NSError? = nil
        var matches: NSArray = context.executeFetchRequest(request, error: &error)

        if matches.count > 0 {
            return matches
        }
        else {
            return nil
        }
    }

    func myNameFetchRequest (entity : CoreDataEntities,
                           property : MyObjectPropertyList,
                              value : String,
                            context : NSManagedObjectContext) -> AnyObject[]? {

        let entityName = entity.description()
        let propertyName = property.description()

        let request :NSFetchRequest = NSFetchRequest(entityName: entityName)
        request.returnsObjectsAsFaults = false
        request.predicate = NSPredicate(format: "\(propertyName) = %@", value)
        let sortDescriptor :NSSortDescriptor = NSSortDescriptor(key: propertyName, ascending: true)
        request.sortDescriptors = [sortDescriptor]
        var error: NSError? = nil
        var matches: NSArray = context.executeFetchRequest(request, error: &error)

        if matches.count > 0 {
            return matches
        }
        else {
            return nil
        }
    }

    //
    //// PRINT FETCH REQUEST
    //

    func printFetchedArrayList (myarray:AnyObject[]) {
        if myarray.count > 0 {
            println("Has \(myarray.count) object")
            for myobject : AnyObject in myarray {
                var anObject = myobject as MyObject
                var thename = anObject.name
                println(thename)
            }
        }
        else {
            println("empty fetch")
        }
    }

Here is my view controller

import UIKit
import CoreData

enum CoreDataEntities {
    case MyObject
    func description() -> String {
        switch self {
        case .MyObject:
            return "MyObject"
        }
    }
}

class ViewController: UIViewController {

    //
    //// MOC
    //

    var managedObjectContext : NSManagedObjectContext = NSManagedObjectContext()

    //
    //// Text Field
    //

    @IBOutlet var myTextField : UITextField

    //
    //// BUTTONS
    //

    @IBAction func saveButtonPress(sender : UIButton) {
        makeEntityAction()
    }

    @IBAction func fetchButtonPress(sender : UIButton) {
        fetchObjectAction()
    }

    //
    //// ACTIONS
    //

    func makeEntityAction () {
        println("-- Make action --")

        let value:String = self.myTextField.text
        var myObject : MyObject = MyObject.createMyObject(MyObjectPropertyList.name, value : value, context: self.managedObjectContext)!
        saveContext(self.managedObjectContext)
    }

    func fetchObjectAction () {
        println("-- Fetch action --")

        if let myTotalarray = myGeneralFetchRequest(CoreDataEntities.MyObject, MyObjectPropertyList.name, self.managedObjectContext) {
            printFetchedArrayList(myTotalarray)
        }
        if let mySinglearray: AnyObject[] = myNameFetchRequest(CoreDataEntities.MyObject, MyObjectPropertyList.name, "Bill", self.managedObjectContext) {
            println("(--  --)")
            printFetchedArrayList(mySinglearray)
        }

    }

    //
    //// LOAD & SAVE
    //

    func loadContext () {
        let appDelegate: AppDelegate = UIApplication.sharedApplication().delegate as AppDelegate
        let context: NSManagedObjectContext = appDelegate.managedObjectContext
        self.managedObjectContext = context
    }

    func saveContext (context: NSManagedObjectContext) {
        var error: NSError? = nil
        context.save(&error)
    }

    //
    //// LOAD
    //

    func myLoad () {
        loadContext ()
        println("Loaded Context")
    }

    //
    //// Life Cycle
    //

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        myLoad ()
    }

}

Solution 2

All Objective-C frameworks are swift-ready. Swift-friendly headers are automatically generated (on-demand, it appears), and you can access anything from Swift that you can from ObjC.

Solution 3

I had tested use swift to access coredata, please visit the demo code : https://github.com/iascchen/SwiftCoreDataSimpleDemo .

Solution 4

If you wanna have a play around with Swift and CoreData, I've written a framework thats an Active Record style assistant to CoreData.

SuperRecord Swift Framework

(note: not a shameless plug :) i actually thought this would be useful for the user).

View more solutions

Comments

[Lucas]

Where can we find the headers? Like the equivalent of the documentation in obj-c.

[rickster]

Look in the Reference Library. All the docs show both Swift and ObjC syntax for using an API. Look at Using Swift with Cocoa and Objective-C for more info on how to mix languages, and see the @NSManaged attribute in particular for working with Core Data.

[Wizard of Kneup]

Do I understand your file correctly? You do not have a working demo?

[Pirijan]

It is certainly unclear, but running the demo myself it does seem to work. It looks like @IascCHEN uses autogenerated Obj-C NSManagedObject subclass files rather than a Swift only solution (which I'd prefer)

[Quaternion]

Preserved comment left in message by user William: You will need to ensure that the text-field is not nil, in addition to that the object you retrieve actually has a name-field. This can be done in conventional if-sentence ways. An example includes: var value:String="default" if(self.myTextField.text != nil) { value=self.myTextField.text }

[IascCHEN]

After Xcode 6 beta 3, you can generate swift NSManagedObject, but you should add @objc in the swift code. please check the member.swift file. U can check the running progress from log.