Core Data done right for iOS 5+/OS X 10.7+.

KFData is a library for using Core Data, featuring many components which can be used separately or together. 1.0 is a major update to this library, and we have provided a migration guide to help you migrate to the latest version.

KFDataStore is a component of KFData which is a wrapper around a Core Data stack. Using the data store, you can create a Core Data stack in various different configuration types.

Normally you would create a single KFDataStore across your whole application, (or across a whole managed object model). You can call methods on a KFDataStore instance to obtain a managed object context or perform blocks of code with a background managed object context.

KFDataStore *dataStore = [KFDataStore standardCloudDataStore];

// You can use helper methods to perform a write or read block
[dataStore performWriteBlock:^(NSManagedObjectContext*)managedObjectContext {
    Person *kylef = [Person createInManagedObjectContext:managedObjectContext];
    [kylef setName:@"Kyle Fuller"];
}];

Writing predicates and sort descriptors can often become cumbersome and hard to manage. Since you need a string of the key value path of any attribute you are trying to use. If you change the name or remove the attribute you will not get compile time checks that "name" was removed from the Person entity.

To solve this problem KFData has created a class to deal with this. You can use it as follows:

NSPredicate *kylePredicate = [[Person name] equal:@"Kyle"];
// This will create a predicate which would be `"name == 'Kyle'"`.

You can even use the attribute in predicate formats:

[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"%K == %@", [Person name], @"Kyle"];

Your managed objects wont automatically implement these methods. So you will either need to manually add them to a subclass, or alternatively you can use our Python tool to generate your managed object implementation files. Instructions on the Python tool can be found here, this tool is still in active development so it may not be ready just yet.

There is another alternative, you won't get autocompletion or 100% correct compile time checks. However we provide a macro which can provide some checks providing you have the "Strict selector matching" warning enabled. This is with a macro, which can be used as follows:

NSPredicate *predicate = [KFAttributeFromKey(name) equal:@"Kyle"];

KFData also provides a helper class to create fetch requests and perform various methods.

For example, to iterate over all people with an age greater than 21 you can do the following:

NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"%K > 21", [Person age]];
KFObjectManager *manager = [[Person managedInManagedObjectContext:context] filter:predicate];

NSLog(@"All people over 21:");

for (Person *person in manager) {
    NSLog(@"- %@", person);
}

CocoaPods is the recommended way to add KFData to your project.

Here's an example podfile that installs KFData.

platform :ios, '5.0'

pod 'KFData'

Note the specification of iOS 5.0 as the platform; leaving out the 5.0 will cause CocoaPods to fail with the following message:

[!] KFData is not compatible with iOS 4.3.

There is full documentation for KFData, it can either be found on CocoaDocs or within the headers of KFData.

Please see our contributing guide for details.

KFData is released under the BSD license. See LICENSE.