Core Data for iPhone: Building Data-Driven Applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Rough Cuts

Apple's Core Data framework presents a unified and powerful solution to storing an application's data. “Core Data for iPhone” offers a comprehensive yet readable reference for the framework and its use in the iPhone 3.0 SDK. The book begins by offering a discussion of general object modeling and data persistence, and demonstrates how to build an object model using Xcode's data modeling tool.

The second part of the book focuses on a discussion of topics that apply to most applications wanting to make use of Core Data on the iPhone. Each facet of the framework or its related technologies is given a separate chapter so it is possible either to read the book from cover to cover, building knowledge in incremental steps, or to pick out the chapters that are of particular interest. Each of these chapters is divided into two sections: the first introduces the particular feature or functionality, discusses why and when it might be useful, then walks through the relevant classes and methods; the second section is written in a tutorial format that starts by adding a basic feature to a simple application, before building on more advanced functionality. If there are multiple ways to achieve or implement a particular feature, the tutorial will explore them, explaining when and where each might be used. The aim of these tutorial sections, therefore, is to enable the reader to “learn by doing,” but in such a way that they can relate the same techniques to their own applications.

The third part of the book takes the reader through building three complete applications using Core Data. These are designed to demonstrate Core Data usage in varying situations, including storing vector information for a drawing application.

The final part of the book looks at performance issues, optimization for the restricted memory requirements of the iPhone, and at debugging tools to aid in developing with Core Data on the iPhone.

Audience for the Book:
Aimed at intermediate to advanced Mac developers, the book assumes that the reader has a reasonable working knowledge of programming iPhone applications. In particular, the reader should be comfortable working with Apple's basic developer tools, the Objective-C language, and the Cocoa Touch framework. It is not assumed that the reader has already worked with Core Data on the desktop.

The book offers the reader a comprehensive discussion of Apple's Core Data framework as it applies on the iPhone, building a firm grounding in the subject before covering more advanced and 'real world' examples of its use.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Introduction
Chapter 1: An overview of Core Data on the iPhone
Chapter 2: Core Data Primer
Chapter 3: Modeling Your Data

Part 2: Working with Core Data
Chapter 4: Table Views and Core Data
Chapter 5: The Fetch Results Controller
Chapter 6: Working with Managed Objects
Chapter 7: Migration and Versioning

Part 3: Building Sample Core Data Applications
Chapter 8: A Simple Voice Recorder
Chapter 9: A Drawing Application with Core Data
Chapter 10: ChemElements Application

Part 4: Optimization and Debugging
Chapter 11: Optimizing for iPhone Memory and Performance Requirements
Chapter 12: Debugging and Testing