NLFetchedResultsTable

NLFetchedResultsTable is a small open-source class that helps you quickly create and configure a UITableViewController that is backed by an NSFetchedResultsController. This is code I use in a lot of my projects, and have extracted into its own class. The primary benefit of using an NLFetchedResultsTable is that it handles a lot of the NSFetchedResultsControllerDelegate and UITableViewDataSource methods for you.

How to Use NLFetchedResultsTable

You can create and instantiate an NLFetchedResultsTable on its own, or you can subclass it to customize to your liking. In the sample code, the app delegate creates an instance of RootViewController with the following:

RootViewController *rootViewController = (RootViewController *)[navigationController topViewController];
rootViewController.managedObjectContext = self.managedObjectContext;
rootViewController.entityName = @"Event";
rootViewController.cellTextLabelKey = @"name";
rootViewController.cellDetailTextLabelKey = @"timeStamp";

The RootViewController class subclasses NLFetchedResultsTable to provide its own add and edit records functionality.

Required Properties

After creating an NLFetchedResultsTable or a subclass of NLFetchedResultsTable, the following properties are required to be set prior to displaying:

1. managedObjectContext - the NSManagedObjectContext from which to fetch objects
2. entityName - an string specifying the name of the entities to fetch
3. cellTextLabelKey - they key to use for the textLabel.text property of the UITableViewCells

Optional Properties

The following properties can optionally be set to add functionality to the NLFetchedResultsController:

1. viewTitle - use this to specify the title for the view
2. reusableCellIdentifier - the reusableCellIdentifier used by the UITableViewCells that are created
3. sectionNameKeyPath - use this to specify the key path to use for sections in the table view
4. sortDescriptors - an NSArray of sortDescriptors to use. By default an NLFetchedResultsTable will sort by the cellTextLabelKey.
5. resultsCacheName - use this to manually specify the name for the frc's results cache
6. cellDetailTextLabelKey - an optional key to use for the cells' detailTextLabel.text

License

This code is free for anyone to use in personal or commercial projects under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

Any comments or suggestions that would help improve this code are always welcome! Enjoy!