Question

I am trying to retrieve results from search bar text in Core Data on a property that is an NSNumber.
In particular, getting objects from the store whose id number “BEGINSWITH” the search text.

As an example, if the user enters the number “1” in the search box, my fetched request returns objects including 1, 12, 14, 19, 100, 149, 1324, etc.

Unfortunately, I am implementing sorting on the table as well, so when sorting by this id number, if represented as a string in the data model, sorting becomes: 1,10,100,2,20,200 instead of 1,2,10,20,100,200.

How can I go about getting the best of both worlds here such that I can search in a string-sort-of-way but sort in a number-sort-of-way?
Do I have to create two properties in the data model, a string and a number representation of the same data?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Rgds,
Felipe

Answer 1

I suggest you have two fields, the actual identifier that is a number and then a searchIdentifier which is a string. Search on the string, sort on the number.