Using selected NSManagedObject across different controllers - core-data

Question

I have an entity called Practice and I use a View Controller called SelectorViewController to select one of the practices, selectedPractice. I then return selectedPractice to a view Controller called RegularViewController where I display some of the selectedPractice attributes. All of this works fine. However the app has a number of other View Controllers which can be reached by modal segues from instances of RegularViewController. As a result, if I leave and then come back to RegularViewController, selectedPractice is reset as null. I would also like to save selectedPractice so that it is available at app initialisation if it has previously been set in SelectorViewController. How do I achieve this by making selectedPractice persistent across the app, and available at runtime?
Regards

Answer 1

Thanks to the post above, which was great, I managed to sort it. Here is my code, which may be very clumsy, but it works.
Firstly, as I loaded the fetchedObjects into a PickerView in SelectorView Controller, I set an attribute "isSelectedPractice" to "NO" with the following code:
for (Practice *fetchedPractice in [self.fetchedResultsController fetchedObjects]) {
[fetchedPractice setValue:#"NO" forKey:#"isSelectedPractice"];
[self.managedObjectContext save:nil];
I then identified for the selected Practice:
- (void)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView didSelectRow:(NSInteger)row inComponent:(NSInteger)component {
Practice *practice = [[self.fetchedResultsController fetchedObjects] objectAtIndex:row];
self.selectedPractice = practice;
NSLog(#"The '%#' practice was selected using the picker", self.selectedPractice.name);
}
as the view Segue'd back to RegularViewController I set the isSelectedPractice attribute for selectedPractice to YES. I kept it this late as I didn't want more than one selection in the PickerView to result in multiple objects with isSelectedPractice YES.
- (void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender
{
if ([segue.identifier isEqualToString:#"SavedPractice Segue"])
{
[self.selectedPractice setValue:#"YES" forKey:#"isSelectedPractice"];
[self.managedObjectContext save:nil];
NSLog(#"Setting SelectedPractice as '%#' in RegularViewController with isSelectedPractice as '%#'",self.selectedPractice.name,self.selectedPractice.isSelectedPractice );
RegularViewController *rvc= segue.destinationViewController;
rvc.delegate = self;
rvc.selectedPractice = self.selectedPractice;
}
else {
NSLog(#"Unidentified Segue Attempted!");
}
}
I then set the following Predicate in the setupFetchedResultsController method of RegularViewController:
request.predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:#"isSelectedPractice = %#", #"YES"];
Many thanks for the help

Answer 2

Without seeing your actual project, one way I know will work but might be a little too round a bout would be to add an attribute "isSelectedPractice" to your entity. You could make it a BOOL, but I've had mixed results with BOOL's in Core Data, I prefer to just leave it as a NSString and set it to "yes" or "no". Then when you pull it down, modify it or add it to core Data as a entity with isSelectedPractice set to "yes". Then in your other controllers, do a
if (self.managedObjectContext == nil) {
self.managedObjectContext = [(AppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate] managedObjectContext];
}
then do a fetch request to get entities with a predicate which is looking for isSelectedPractice equaling "yes". If you need actual code samples on how to do this let me know and I'll edit them in.