MagicalRecord importFromObject: JSON with dictionary?

Question

I\'m parsing some JSON which comes to me in this format:

{
dataId = \"823o7tr23d387g\";
category = \"link\";
details = {
    text = \"Some text associated wi         


        

Answer 1

The blog Scott mentioned is a must read for who use MagicalRecord.

In addition, if the default + (id) importFromObject:(id)data doesn't work on some of your NSDictionary data, you can always override the - (BOOL) importValuesForKeysWithObject:(id)objectData method in your NSManagedObject subclass to achieve the exact control over mapping.

Here's a snippet from one of my recent project:

// override MagicalRecord's implementation with additional set up for Dialogue relationship
- (BOOL) importValuesForKeysWithObject:(id)objectData {
    BOOL result = [super importValuesForKeysWithObject:objectData];

    // update lesson-dialogue data
    id dialogueDicts = [objectData objectForKey:@"dialogue"];
    if ([dialogueDicts isKindOfClass:[NSArray class]]) {
        for (id dialogueDict in dialogueDicts) {
            DialogueSentence *dialogue = [DialogueSentence findFirstByAttribute:@"id" withValue:[[dialogueDict objectForKey:@"id"]];
            if (dialogue == nil) {
                dialogue = [DialogueSentence createEntity];
            }
            [dialogue importValuesForKeysWithObject:dialogueDict];
            [self addDialoguesObject:dialogue];    // connect the relationship
        }
    }

    return result;
}

By the way, you may want to create a category of your NSManagedObject subclass and write the overriding code there, because when you upgrade your Core Data model version and re-generate the NSManagedObject subclasses, your own code won't be wiped out.