Question

I have a Person Object which has two NSString properties; firstName and lastName.
I’m currently using an NSPredicate like so:

NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"(firstName contains[cd] %@) OR (lastName contains[cd] %@)", searchText, searchText];

So, for example, say I’m searching for the name "John Smith". In my search bar if I type "Joh", then John Smith will appear as an option. This is good and fine, but if I type in "John Sm" it will go blank.

How can I join firstName and lastName in the predicate so if I was searching for "John Sm" then John Smith would still appear as an option.

I hope this makes sense. Thanks.

EDIT:
To add a bit more clarification, I’m using the SearchDisplayController delegate method:

-(void)filterContentForSearchText:(NSString *)searchText scope:(NSString *)scope;

and I’m using the predicate like so:

newArray = [personObjectArray filteredArrayUsingPredicate:predicate];

Answer 1

Try this,

NSString *text = @"John Smi";
NSString *searchText = [text stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]];

NSArray *array = [searchText componentsSeparatedByString:@" "];
NSString *firstName = searchText;
NSString *lastName = searchText;
NSPredicate *predicate = nil;

if ([array count] > 1) {
    firstName = array[0];
    lastName = array[1];
    predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"(firstName CONTAINS[cd] %@ AND lastName CONTAINS[cd] %@) OR (firstName CONTAINS[cd] %@ AND lastName CONTAINS[cd] %@)", firstName, lastName, lastName, firstName];
} else {
    predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"firstName CONTAINS[cd] %@ OR lastName CONTAINS[cd] %@", firstName, lastName];
}

NSArray *filteredArray = [people filteredArrayUsingPredicate:predicate];
NSLog(@"%@", filteredArray);

Output:

(
        {
        firstName = John;
        lastName = Smith;
    }
)

Here text represents the searched text. The advantage with the above is, even if you pass text = @"Smi Joh"; or text = @"John "; or text = @" smi"; or text = @"joh smi ";, it will still show the above output.