Question

In my project I have some objects that I show from a server, lets call them Foo’s. When I get my Foo feed, I parse them into a NSMutableDictionary subclass called RemoteFoo, and pass these RemoteFoo objects all around the app to display data.

If the user ends up wanting to download a RemoteFoo, I then create a core-data NSManagedObject entity called Foo, and instantiate it using the values from the RemoteFoo. All this works.

The problem I have is that If I want a method to run on a RemoteFoo and a Foo, I have to duplicate it in both RemoteFoo.m and Foo.m. Also, my app if full of duplicate init’s like:

- (id)initWithFoo:(Foo *)foo;
- (id)initWithRemoteFoo:(RemoteFoo *)foo;

How can I avoid all of this code-duplication while still separating the temporary remote RemoteFoo from the core-data Foo entities that represent the Foo the user has saved locally?

Answer 1

You could just save all RemoteFoo’s as Foo’s and work with those. If you need different behavior, you could have an attribute on Foo indicating if it’s remote or not.