Saving data to files

In some circumstances you want to save data to disk, in some cases you will use a database for that. But if you need , for example, to save the highscores of a game then a database will be a bit overkill.

In that case you can use core data, so lets look at a small example of how this works.
(Consider you already have an application in which you want to include a mechanism to save data).

Step 1 : add a data model

In XCode , you open the file assistant (via File>New File) and select 'data model'



Once you defined the data model , you'll get something like this :


I already added an Entity called HighScores , you add the entity via the menuitem (Design>Data Model>Add Entity).
I a same fashion you can add attributes to the entity (Desgin>Data Model>Add Attribute).
In my case I just defined 3 attributes : name,rank and score.

So this is all their is to define a datamodel (of course this is a very simple datamodel).
Now we need some coding to save information to the datamodel (and to file).

Step 2 : datastore identification

First we need to define in which file we will store the information :

NSError *error ; // this is for error reporting ; see later

NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:@"/Users/Herman/file.xml"];

Step 3 : define the datamodel we will use (= the datamodel in the project)

NSArray *bundles = [NSArray arrayWithObject:[NSBundle mainBundle]];

NSManagedObjectModel *model = [NSManagedObjectModel mergedModelFromBundles:bundles];

Step 4 : associate the datamodel with the datastore (= the file) via a coordinator

NSPersistentStoreCoordinator *coordinator = [[NSPersistentStoreCoordinator alloc] initWithManagedObjectModel:model];
[coordinator addPersistentStoreWithType:NSXMLStoreType configuration:nil URL:url options: nil error:&error];

Step 5 : Get the context

context = [[NSManagedObjectContext alloc] init];
[context setPersistentStoreCoordinator: coordinator];

Step 6 : Save some data to the file

NSManagedObject *score = [NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"HighScores" inManagedObjectContext:context];
[score setValue:@"bla bla" forKey:@"name"] ;
[score setValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt: 100] forKey:@"score"] ;
[score setValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt: 1] forKey:@"rank"] ;
[context save: &error ] ;

Et voila, we have a simple way of saving data to a file.
In a next message I'll discuss how to retrieve data and do some more complex queries on files.