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Introduction to Low-Level Core Data Tutorial

Contents:

Who Should Read This Document
Organization of This Document
See Also

This tutorial takes you through the steps of building a very basic Core Data–based command line utility. The goal is to illustrate the creation of a Core Data application entirely in code.

The task goal of this tutorial is to create a low-level Core Data-based utility. It simply records the date on which the utility is run, and its process ID, and prints the run history to the output. It shows that although Cocoa bindings can be used to leverage the functionality in Core Data, it is possible to use Core Data independently. Moreover, it shows all aspects of the creation of a Core Data stack, instantiation of managed objects, and fetching, all without the distraction of a user interface—it even shows the creation of a model in code.

Who Should Read This Document

You will find this tutorial useful if you are using the Core Data framework to create a utility that does not have a user interface or if you want to gain a deeper understanding of the Core Data infrastructure.

Organization of This Document

“Overview of the Tutorial” describes the utility you will create, and the task constraints.

“Creating the Project” describes how you create a Foundation Tool project in Xcode, and how you link in Core Data.

“Creating the Managed Object Model” describes how you create the data model for the utility in code.

“The Application Log Directory” illustrates one way to identify and if necessary create a directory in which to save the file for the utility’s persistent store.

“Creating the Core Data Stack” describes how to create and configure the managed object context and the persistent store coordinator in code.

“The Custom Managed Object Class” specifies the Run entity and describes how to implement a custom managed object class.

“Listing Previous Runs” describes how to fetch Run instances from the persistent store.

“Complete Source Listings” shows the complete source code for the project.

See Also

You may want to read these documents if you want a better understanding of Core Data or if you want to use Core Data in a document–based application.

Core Data Programming Guide describes functionality provided by the Core Data framework from a high-level overview to in-depth descriptions.

NSPersistentDocument Core Data Tutorial takes you through the steps of building a document–based application that uses Core Data.

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