Initialize Core Data With Default Data

Question

I have a basic question regarding populating Core Data with data. I am building an application, which will show ATMs on a map. I would like to ship the application with a preloaded database, but to give users the option to receive updates when they launch the app. I am thinking about using a property list for the update. Basically send a plist of all the ATMs, parse that plist and populate the sqlite. I will have around 7000 entries in the property list file, each entry containing 5-6 keys with short string values. But according to the Apple iOS Developer Library:

You can create a property list—or some other file-based representation—of the data, and store it as an application resource. When you want to use it, you must open the file and parse the representation to create managed objects. You should not use this technique on iOS, and only if absolutely necessary on Mac OS X. Parsing a file to create a store incurs unnecessary overhead. It is much better to create a Core Data store yourself offline and use it directly in your application.

Should I still be sending a property list or rather think for an alternative solution to update the application's database?

P.S. I am thinking about using a Rails app for providing updates - basically sending a plist file.

Answer 1

I had nearly the same question a few months back, did quite a bit of searching to find a nice easy answer, failed to find it and eventually settled on a roll-your-own solution that took a bit more time than I would have hoped, but was at least very helpful in learning to understand Core Data.

Basically the solution was to write a little utility that parsed my source data (which for me is a comma-separated text file, parsed using the quite handy 'cCSVParse' library - http://michael.stapelberg.de/cCSVParse ) and inserted it into Core Data Managed Objects and then saved that off as a sqlite persistent store. Then the sqlite store(s) can be shipped with the app, and uploaded by the user when they buy more data.

You could write a conversion from plist (or whatever) into the core data representation within the app itself, but if the data is just going live out the rest of its days in some core data form, why not let your beefy dev box do the heavy lifting before you send the data to the user, instead of shipping the data to the phone and making it do the work?