CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosobjective-ccocoa-touchcore-datansmanagedobject
gabriellanata
gabriellanata

Reputation: 4336

Suggestion for CoreData and object handling

I need a suggestios on how to correctly implement CoreData with objects that can be uploaded/downloaded from server and sent through game center.

The app is similar to a trading card game, you can get the idea from these 2 separate entities:

Does anyone have any suggestion on how to do this correctly? Currently I have two ideas:

A. Use CoreData for everything, this would mean that the "UserCard"s are NSManagedObject subclasses which get intelligently encoded/decoded (using NSCoding) to upload/download and send through GameCenter. The basic "Card" is set as a relationship in Core Data. A "temporary" attribute is also set for the "UserCard"s to be able to know which ones do not belong to the current user so they can be deleted later.

B. Use CoreData only for the Basic "Card"s and use a NSObject subclass for the "UserCard"s. This allows me to directly use the "UserCard"s without the need to insert them into CoreData. Makes it easier to download/upload and send through GameCenter. It also removes the need for the "temporary" property because the objects will just be deallocated when the view has stopped using them. The problem with this method is that I would need another way to store the current user's "UserCard"s in the device because they do need to be available offline.

Thank you!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 191

Answers (1)

random
random

Reputation: 8608

Personally, I would use CoreData all around. Reasons:

  1. You're already having to dive into CoreData to deal with Cards anyways
  2. Just create an NSManagedObject category called NSManagedObject+JSON. In it have a simple method called -(NSDictionary*)jsonRepresentation and have the UserCard format itself into a dictionary and return itself. Super easy.
  3. It would be safer to use CoreData and save often, rather than run the risk of writing to a file and it either: 1. getting corrupted (highly unlikely but user would be mad if it did); or 2. not getting fully written (user could kill the app before it has time to write everything to a file)
  4. The extra little bit of work to implement the UserCard entity would be small.
  5. You get the built memory management and searching functions of CoreData.

I just finished a large project working with CoreData so I may be a little biased. From what you've stated in your question though, I would take CoreData for everything. Here are some helpful opensource libraries when dealing with CoreData and a web server:

MagicalRecord

AFIncrementalStore

And a great tutorial for integrating CoreData with a web server.

Upvotes: 2

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