In the context of loading an XML file, what's a good name for the step in which you create internal data structures (be they objects, structs, or whatever) to hold the data in memory? What do you usually call the other steps?
LOAD, OPEN, or READ the xml, by opening a file.
PARSE the xml, with some XML parser.
??? the xml, creating data structures.
Options that have come to mind for step 3 are: handle, create_foobars, create_foobars_from_xml, or even read, load, or parse.
One other option that comes to mind is to have an object's constructor take an xml entity, but I'm not fond of coupling the objects to the xml schema like that.
Deserialization is the correct term for the "???" part of your question. If you want to convert the object back to XML, then that would be (you guessed it) serialization.
Deserialization or unmarshalling.
Related
Is there any way to retrieve information from a CArchive file if we don't know what type of objects are stored in the CArchive file?
I want to know in what format information is stored in a CArchive file.
Please help me out in this.
The file format is documented under TN002: Persistent Object Data Format. While that explains how objects are identified in the data stream for deserialization, the actual logic to dump data into the CArchive and to read it back is at the discretion of the CObject-derived class implementation for classes that use the DECLARE_SERIAL and IMPLEMENT_SERIAL macros.
Without the actual (de-)serialization code there's little you can do with a binary CArchive stream, unless the implementation that produced it uses the standard serialization methods throughout, allowing you to guess the data types stored.
Unlike JSON or XML, though, a CArchive's serialized data isn't self-describing. Even when you know the type of any given piece of data, there's nothing in the file that carries any semantic information.
I use Cocoa's Core Data framework which has the possibility of writing the data to XML via NSXMLStoreType.
For Copy & Paste in my app would I now like to write some core data objects to NSPasteboard and read it from there again. I thought that it should be able to read and write the in-build XML representation. Of course could I create a Codable interface for my core data classes, but I rather reuse the core data implementation.
How can I do this best?
Many thanks in advance!
The problem with this strategy is that the details of the XML store's schema implementation is internal to Apple. If you're going to use the results with another XML store, you should be ok. But I wouldn't expect the XML schema Apple uses to lend itself to being useful outside of that context, as it is written to disk, or depend on it not to change.
You can specify the store type when configuring an instance of NSPersistantContainer by setting its persistentStoreDescriptions property. NSPersistentStoreDescription has a type property, which can be set to NSXMLStoreType.
I understand how to use the FlatBufferBuilder and specific type builder (e.g., MyNestedTableBuilder) to get the WIPOffset and then use that to get the finished_data buffer (&[u8]). I then have been using get_root to get an object based on the buffer, so now I have an instance of MyNestedTable. Then I need to pass that to another function and create a new table instance via a new builder, MyTable, that has the field add_my_nested_table. I cannot see how to do this without unpacking MyNestedTable and rebuilding it again (which seems very inefficient). I am sure there is a good way to do this, I just haven't found it, even after studying the generated code and API.
Generally we have a need to pass objects around and reuse them, over the network or via API calls in Rust.
MyNestedTable isn't really an object, it is a handle to data inside the serialized data (your [u8]), and any field accesses look up this data on the fly.
None of the base APIs for any of the FlatBuffers supported languages (including Rust) have code generated that allows automatic re-serializing, since that is not a frequent operation in most use cases (you already have the serialized data).
The way to do it is through the optional "object API", supported in C++ and some other languages, but not yet in Rust. As you can see, CasperN is working on such an API.
Until then, you may consider using nested_flatbuffer or some other construct to directly pass the serialized data to wherever it needs to go.
I am trying to store a plist and several binary files (let's say images) as part of an UIManagedDocument. The name of the binary files are an attribute in Core Data and I don't need to enumerate them, just access the right one when showing the related entity.
The file structure that I want to have is:
- <File yyyyMMdd-HHmmss>.extdoc
- StoreContent
- persistentStore
- AdditionalContent
- ListStatus.plist (used to store per document defaults)
- Images
- uuid1.png
- uuid2.png
- ...
- uuidn.png
So far, I have successfully followed the instructions in How do I save additional content into my UIManagedDocument file packages?, but when I try to add the binary files there are some things that I don't know how to do.
Should I treat the URL /the/path/File yyyyMMdd-HHmmss.extdoc/AdditionalContent (the default one provided with readAdditionalContentFromURL:error:) as a NSFileWrapper? Are there any advantages/disadvantages vs just using the URLs? I find it more complicated to use the file wrapper, since the plist has to be read using the file wrapper accessors and NSCoder (I guess), and the files, I have to store the file wrapper for the Images directory and then obtain the corresponding node with objectForKey (I assume). But Apple's Document-Based Apps Programming Guide for iOS regarding custom formats instead of NSData or NSFileWrapper, states "Keep in mind that your code will have to duplicate what UIDocument does for you, and so you must deal with greater complexity and a greater possibility of error." Am I misunderstanding this?
Per document defaults are declared as properties: the setter modifies the NSDictionary that maps the plist and marks the document as updated, and the getter accesses the dictionary with the proper key. How do I expose the ability to read/write the binary files? Should I add a method to my subclass of UIManagedDocument? - (void)writeImage:(NSString*)uuid; and -(UIImage *)readImage:(NSString *)uuid; And should I keep this data in memory until the document is saved? How?
Assuming that NSFileWrapper is the way to go, if I plan to use this document with iCloud should I use file coordinators with the file wrapper? If so, how?
Any source code for each question will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
P.S.: I know that I could save some binary data inside of Core Data, but I don't feel comfortable with that solution. Among other reasons, I rather store the PNG data for image files that a serialized version of UIImage that won't be compatible with NSImage if I want to create a desktop app.
I'd like to say that, in general I rather like UIManagedDocument. It has a few advantages over raw Core Data. For example, it sets up the entire core data stack for you automatically. It also sets up nested managed object contexts for you, so you get free background saving. None of that is particularly earth-shattering, but it's a lot of functionality from a tiny amount of code.
I haven't played around with saving additional information...but here are my thoughts.
First, you shouldn't need to treat the new URL as a file wrapper. You should just be able to do regular file operations on the provided URL. Just make sure you have everything implemented properly in additionalContentForURL:error:, writeAdditionalContent:toURL:originalContentsURL:error: and readAdditionalContentFromURL:error:. The read and write operations need to be symmetric. And you should probably snapshot your data in additionalContentsForURL:error: so that everything will be saved in a known, good state (since the save operations are asynchronous).
As an alternative, have you considered using the Store in External Record File flag in your data model instead of saving it manually? This should force Core Data to (depending on the size of the binary data) automatically store them externally. I looked at the release notes, and I didn't see anything saying you couldn't use this feature with iCloud. That might be the easiest fix.
Attacking a side point for the moment (as I have not had ANY good experience with UIManagedDocument).
You can save the binary inside of Core Data for a iOS 5.0+ application using the external file reference. Then you can save the PNG of the image to Core Data directly and not need to worry about a UIManagedDocument or about bloating the sqlite file.
There is nothing stopping you from storing the PNG instead of a UIImage.
One other thought. You may need to use an NSFileCoordinator for the read and write operations. Technically, any read or write operations in the iCloud container need to use a file coordinator (to coordinate with the iCloud sync service--this prevents accidentally corrupting a file by reading it while another process is writing to it).
I know that UIDocument wraps most of its input and output methods automatically. I'd guess that these methods are similarly wrapped (since they give you a URL to use)--However, the docs aren't very clear.
I have been searching for some sample code on how to store an NSArray in Core Data for awhile now, but haven't had any luck. Would anyone mind pointing me to some tutorial or example, or better yet write a simple sample as an answer to this question? I have read this but it doesn't show an example of how to go about implementing a transformable attribute that is an NSArray. Thanks in advance!
If you really need to do it, then encode as data. I simply created a new filed called receive as NSData (Binary data).
Then in the NSManagedObject implementation:
-(void)setReceiveList:(NSArray*)list{
self.receive = [NSKeyedArchiver archivedDataWithRootObject:list];
}
-(NSArray*)getReceiveList{
return [NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithData:self.receive];
}
Transformable attributes are the correct way to persist otherwise unsupported object values in Core Data (such as NSArray). From Core Data Programming Guide: Non-Standard Persistent Attributes:
The idea behind transformable attributes is that you access an attribute as a non-standard type, but behind the scenes Core Data uses an instance of NSValueTransformer to convert the attribute to and from an instance of NSData. Core Data then stores the data instance to the persistent store.
A transformable attribute uses an NSValueTransformer to store an otherwise unsupported object in the persistent store. This allows Core Data to store just about anything that can be represented as NSData - which can be very useful. Unfortunately, transformable attributes cannot be matched in a predicate or used in sorting results with the NSSQLiteStoreType. This means that transformable attributes are useful only for storage, not discovery of objects.
The default transformer allows any object that supports NSCoding (or NSSecureCoding) to be stored as a transformable attribute. This includes NSArray, UIColor, UIImage, NSURL, CLLocation, and many others. It's not recommended to use this for data that can be arbitrarily large, as that can have a significant performance impact when querying the store. Images, for example, are a poor fit for transformable attributes - they are large bags of bytes that fragment the store. In that case, it's better to use the external records storage capabilities of Core Data, or to store the data separately as a file, and store the URL to the file in Core Data. If you must store a UIImage in Core Data, be sure you know the trade offs involved.
Creating a transformable attribute is easy:
• In the Xcode Core Data Model Editor, select the model attribute you want to modify. In the right side inspector, set the attribute type as "Transformable". You can leave the "Name" field blank to use the default transformer. If you were using a custom transformer, you would enter the class name here and register the class using +[NSValueTransformer setValueTransformer:forName:] somewhere in your code.
• In your NSManagedObject subclass header declare the property that describes the transformable attribute with the correct type. In this case, we're using NSArray:
#property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *transformedArray;
• In the NSManagedObject subclass implementation file the property should be dynamic:
#dynamic transformedArray;
And you are done. When an NSArray value object is passed to setTransformedArray: that array is retained by the object. When the context is saved Core Data will transform the NSArray into NSData using the NSValueTransformer described in the model. The NSData bytes will be saved in the persistent store.
You don't store an NSArray natively in Core Data. You need to transform the values stored within the array into something Core Data can use, and then save the data in the store so that you can push and pull it to your NSArray as needed.
Philip's answer is right. You don't store arrays in Core Data. It is totally against what Core Data is made for. Most of the time you don't need the information of the array but one and that one can get dynamically loaded by Core Data. In the case of collections, it makes no difference if you iterate through an array of your whatever properties or of an array of fetched results on an NSSet (which is basically just an array too).
Here is the explanation what Philip said. You can't store an array directly, but you can create a property list from it. There is a method in all NS Arraytypes that gives you a nice and clean string and core data love strings. The cool thing about property lists stored as strings is, they can become what they were. There is a method for that in NSString. Tataaa...
There is a price of course.
Arrays as property lists can get gigantic and that doesn't go well with iOS devices where RAM is limited. Trying to save an array to core data indicates a poor entity design especially for large data. A small array is OK for speed reasons.
Another, less space consuming way, is to use binary property lists. Those come close to zip sizes when stored in Core Data or directly in the filesystem. Downside is, you can't simply open and read them like an XML or JSON file. For development I prefer something human readable and for release the binary version. A constant tied to the DEBUG value in the preprocessor takes care of that, so I don't have to change my code.
Core Data stores instances of NSManagedObject or subclasses of same. NSManagedObject itself is very much like a dictionary. To-many relationships between objects are represented as sets. Core Data has no ordered list that would correspond to an array. Instead, when you retrieve objects from a Core Data store, you use a fetch request. That fetch request can specify one or more sort descriptors that are used to sort the objects, and the objects returned by a fetch request are stored in an array.
If preserving the order of objects is important, you'll need to include an attribute in your entity that can be used to sort the objects when you fetch them.