How to prevent Core Data making duplicates in iOS 5?

Question

I\'ve run into a problem.

Over the weekend I\'ve been working on a project where I\'m pulling a large xml from a webservice.

It basically has 3 tiers - Clien

Answer 1

As Stated in Apple Docs https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CoreData/Articles/cdImporting.html

You need to loop the data model and handle it from there like this

Example:

// loop over employeeIDs
// anID = ... each employeeID in turn
// within body of loop

NSString *predicateString = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"employeeID == %@", anID];

NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:predicateString];

Personally I do not like this method and I wrote this snippet of code that handles this in a pro-efficient manor and which is straight forward! I noticed with Apples method I ran into issues with strings having different characters such as capitol letters and spaces. Below code is tested and working if you rename all your corresponding objects correctly I honestly believe this is the most efficient way to accomplish not adding duplicates in core data.

-(void)AvoidDuplicatesinDataModel
{
    // Define our table/entity to use
    NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Users"
                                              inManagedObjectContext:managedObjectContext];

    // Setup the fetch request
    NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init];
    [request setEntity:entity];

    // Define how we will sort the records
    NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"users"
                                                                   ascending:NO];
    NSArray *sortDescriptors = [NSArray arrayWithObject:sortDescriptor];

    [request setSortDescriptors:sortDescriptors];
    [sortDescriptor release];

    // Fetch the records and handle an error
    NSError *Fetcherror;
    NSMutableArray *mutableFetchResults = [[managedObjectContext
                                            executeFetchRequest:request error:&Fetcherror] mutableCopy];

    if (!mutableFetchResults) {
        // Handle the error.
        // This is a serious error
    }

    //here usersNameTextField.text can be any (id) string that you are searching for
    if ([[mutableFetchResults valueForKey:@"users"]
         containsObject:usernameTextField.text]) {
        //Alert user or handle your duplicate methods from here
        return;
    }
}

Answer 2

I fear you have to keep your DB clean by yourself … The easiest way would be using NSFetchRequest: When importing your updated data you can run a query against the existing data and decide what you want to do.

As Marcus S. Zarra mentioned in another thread about this topic:

When you are importing a new row you can run a query against the existing rows to see if it is already in place. To do this you create a NSFetchRequest against your entity, set the predicate to look for the guid property and set the max rows returned to 1.

I would recommend keeping this NSFetchRequest around during your import so that you can reuse it while going through the import. If the NSFetchRequest returns a row you can update that row. If it does not return a row then you can insert a new row.

When done correctly you will find the performance more than acceptable.

Another source for good information are Apples Programming Guides: Core Data Programming Guide