Question

I have an existing application using Core Data on the iPhone. Occasionally there would be updates to the application’s data delivered as updates to the App Store. In my perfect world, building an application to edit the data in the updates with an OS X application and copying the sqlite database to my iPhone app bundle would be a relatively pain-free way to do this.

Is it possible to move sqlite database (assuming they use the same data model) between OS X and iPhone OS?

What are the things I should watch out for that isn’t portable between (like 32-bit vs. 64-bit data)?

Are there better alternatives that I’m overlooking?

Answer 1

The SQLite format is identical between Mac and iPhone applications with the same data model. It’s pretty trivial to generate a Mac application to edit your database (I do this for my iPhone application). In fact, you can take your data model and quickly drag and drop an interface for it (from the Core Data Programming Guide FAQ):

In Mac OS X v10.5 and later, in
Interface Builder you can drag a Core
Data Entity item from the Library onto
a window or box. Interface Builder
then presents a panel that allows you
to select the entity you want from the
currently-open Xcode projects.

Note that you can also create and
configure an NSController instance in
Interface Builder. As in the case of
creating a user interface, you
Option-click an entity in the Data
Modeling tool in Xcode (or select the
Core Data Entity item from the
Library), but you drag it to a the
Interface Builder file window. For
editing one object, an
NSObjectController instance is
created; for editing many objects, an
NSArrayController instance is created.

I’d also check out Core Data Editor, which loads in your compiled managed object model and lets you edit your database from that.