Question

I’ve struggled with this all day using answers from here, but I cannot find a solution that is working for me, so I thought I’d ask for help:

I have an array of objects that I’ve extracted from an entity.

All I want to do is to write the objects to a file.

What I’ve come up with so far is this:

    NSLog(@" Exported Records: %i", [exportArray count]); 
    // the count here is 4 records.
    //Each record has about 8 elements. 
//I'm just trying to get this working with the first two elements right now

        NSString *writeString = nil;
        NSError *error = nil;
        int i = 0;
        NSString *key = nil;
        NSString *tempString = nil;
        for (i=0; i<[exportArray count]; i++)
        {
            tempString = [tempString stringByAppendingString: @" \n "];

            for (int j=0; j<3; j++)
            {
                if (j == 0)
                {
                    key = [[exportArray objectAtIndex:i]  valueForKey:@"title"];
                    //[NSString stringWithFormat:tempString2, [[exportArray objectAtIndex:i]  valueForKey:@"title"]];
                }
                if (j == 1)
                {
                    key = [[exportArray objectAtIndex:i]  valueForKey:@"username"];
                    //[NSString stringWithFormat:tempString2, [[exportArray objectAtIndex:i]  valueForKey:@"username"]];
                }
                writeString = [NSString stringWithFormat:tempString, key];
            }
        }

        // Write to the file
        [writeString writeToFile:dataFile atomically:YES
                    encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:&error];
        if (error)
        {
            NSLog(@"%@", error);
        }

Right now, all I’m getting the the last item, so I’m overwriting the string. But, there must be a better method to achieve this. Please let me know if there is another answer here matches my question, or please, post some ideas.

UPDATE

When I log the exportArray, I get this:

"<ItemEntity: 0x1ddf6560> (entity: ItemEntity; id: 0x1ddf46d0 <x-coredata://78FBC4A5-AE1A-4344-98AB-978126457D96/ItemEntity/p2> ; data: <fault>)",
    "<ItemEntity: 0x1ddf6800> (entity: ItemEntity; id: 0x1ddf46e0 <x-coredata://78FBC4A5-AE1A-4344-98AB-978126457D96/ItemEntity/p2051> ; data: <fault>)",
    "<ItemEntity: 0x1ddf6860> (entity: ItemEntity; id: 0x1ddf45d0 <x-coredata://78FBC4A5-AE1A-4344-98AB-978126457D96/ItemEntity/p3075> ; data: <fault>)",
    "<ItemEntity: 0x1ddf68c0> (entity: ItemEntity; id: 0x1ddf45e0 <x-coredata://78FBC4A5-AE1A-4344-98AB-978126457D96/ItemEntity/p5124> ; data: <fault>)"
)

When I log the actual values:

NSLog(@" Exported titles: %@", [exportArray valueForKey:@"title"]);
NSLog(@" Exported usernames: %@", [exportArray valueForKey:@"username"]);

I get correct results. I just don’t know how to tie these and the other attributes together..

  Exported titles: (
    1,
    2,
    4,
    6
)
  Exported usernames: (
    ellis,
    david,
    bea,
    ian
)

Answer 1

If you just have NSDictionaries in your array, you can use writeToFile:atomically: which will save a file in .plist format (which is much easier to read than a CSV).

Check out the Apple Docs for NSArray, and a good write up on plists.

So you would end up having:

[exportArray writeToFile:fileName atomically:YES];

---

Edit: You cannot save a core data object to a file. So what you want to do is create an interim array with just the data you want, then write that to the file.

NSMutableArray* arrayToSave = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:exportArray.count];
[exportArray enumerateObjectsUsingBlock:^(id obj, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop) {
    NSDictionary* exportDict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
                                [obj objectForKey:@"username"], @"username",
                                [obj objectForKey:@"title"], @"title", nil];
    [arrayToSave addObject:exportDict];
}];

[arrayToSave writeToFile:fileName atomically:YES];