The AFIncrementalStore is a concrete implementation of the NSIncrementalStore API (see Chris’ blog and NSHipster for more details), which allows you to access remote endpoints, like RESTful “Web Services”, by using the CoreData API.
The project has three simple examples, including how to apply type mapping, in cases when you can’t use the JSON key in your class, like ID or description (as these are ObjC key words).
As shown in the examples, you need to override the attributesForRepresentation:ofEntity:fromResponse method, like:
- (NSDictionary *)attributesForRepresentation:(NSDictionary *)representation
ofEntity:(NSEntityDescription *)entity
fromResponse:(NSHTTPURLResponse *)response
{
NSMutableDictionary *mutablePropertyValues =
[[super attributesForRepresentation:representation
ofEntity:entity
fromResponse:response] mutableCopy];
if ([entity.name isEqualToString:@"Task"]) {
NSString *description =
[representation valueForKey:@"description"];
[mutablePropertyValues setValue:description forKey:@"desc"];
}
return mutablePropertyValues;
}
The above code basically says that on the Task entity (managed object) the desc property is used to store the result of the description key in the JSON response. However, the above code only works for reading…
In case you want to create or update a new entity, you need to override the representationOfAttributes:ofManagedObject method like below:
- (NSDictionary *)representationOfAttributes:(NSDictionary *)attributes
ofManagedObject:(NSManagedObject *)managedObject {
NSMutableDictionary *mutablePropertyValues =
[[super representationOfAttributes:attributes
ofManagedObject:managedObject] mutableCopy];
if ([managedObject.entity.name isEqualToString:@"Task"]) {
NSString *description = [managedObject valueForKey:@"desc"];
[mutablePropertyValues setValue:description forKey:@"description"];
[mutablePropertyValues removeObjectForKey:@"desc"];
}
return mutablePropertyValues;
}
This code is basically the other way around… it reads the value from the managed object property (here desc), and stashes that on a dictionary, which is used by the underlying HTTP Client, to send the form data to the server. Inside of that dictionary, we are using the description key, that is required by our RESTful web service. To be safe… remove the odd desc field from the dictionary. Otherwise you may receive an error since the server does not like/understand the desc filed in the request….
Once you managed this little oddnes, it’s straightforward. As mentioned before, the ObjC type mapping to/from JSON is a little odd… This (of course) applies to CoreData and it’s managed objects as well.
