Question

I have one-to-many parent-child entity Book <->> Borrow

Book

• name
• borrows (relation)

Borrow

• borrowDate
• note
• book (relation)

and I want to sort Book entity in NSFetchedResultsController using max NSDate of child entity to show most recently borrowed book.

How can I do this ? I tried using my own method something like this using Category on Book

- (NSArray *)borrowSortedByborrowedDate
{
    NSSortDescriptor *sortByCreatedDate = [NSSortDescriptor sortDescriptorWithKey:@"borrowDate" ascending:NO];
    NSArray *sortedArray = [self.histories sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:[NSArray arrayWithObject:sortByCreatedDate]];
    return sortedArray;
}

- (NSDate *)recentBorrowDate
{
    Borrow *borrow = [[self borrowSortedByborrowedDate] objectAtIndex:0];
    return borrow.borrowDate;
}

and put it in sortDescriptor

NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"recentBorrowDate" ascending:YES];

but it didn’t work.

Here is my fetched request (Didn’t work)

NSFetchRequest *fetchRequest = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init];

NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Book" inManagedObjectContext:self.managedObjectContext];
[fetchRequest setEntity:entity];

[fetchRequest setFetchBatchSize:20];

NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"recentBorrowDate" ascending:YES];
NSArray *sortDescriptors = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:sortDescriptor, nil];

[fetchRequest setSortDescriptors:sortDescriptors];

My expected result is

• Book name1 (borrowDate today)
• Book name2 (borrowDate yesterday)
• Book name3 (borrowDate many days ago)

Answer 1

I have the same issue and this is my current workaround to achieve the desired output. (maybe this is the only way, but I am still looking…)

When creating a new Borrow just update the book.lastBorrowDate property at the same time.

// Create new Borrow and set Book
Borrow *newBorrow = (Borrow *)[NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"Borrow" inManagedObjectContext:self.managedObjectContext];
newBorrow.book = theBook;
newBorrow.borrowDate = [NSDate date];
newBorrow.note = theNote;

// Now also update our book's lastBorrowDate tracking property
theBook.lastBorrowDate = [NSDate date];

// Save all our changes
NSError *error = nil;
if (![self.managedObjectContext save:&error]) {
    // Something went horribly wrong...
    NSLog(@"Unresolved error: %@, %@, %@", error, [error userInfo],[error localizedDescription]);
    abort(); // Fail
}

Now when pulling them out later it’s easy…

NSFetchRequest *fetchRequest = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init];

NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Book" inManagedObjectContext:self.managedObjectContext];
[fetchRequest setEntity:entity];

[fetchRequest setFetchBatchSize:20];

NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"lastBorrowDate" ascending:YES];
NSArray *sortDescriptors = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:sortDescriptor, nil];

[fetchRequest setSortDescriptors:sortDescriptors];