Needs solution to store XML as object or as such in iPhone Apps

Question

Hi,

I am a beginner to iPhone App development. Please help me out.

In my iPhone application, I am making an API request and getting an XML.

I have to parse it, store it in a object(or xml as such) and also display it in my application at a later point of time (Its more like storing the current state).

I figured out how to request API, parse it, but dono what to do for storing it. Here are my constraints.

1. When I exit & re-open the application next time, I have to retain the downloaded XML data.
2. I have explored and got solutions to request API and parsing it using NSXMLParser. But for storing it in phone memory or application bundle, I have not got a clear idea.

3. As I searched through various threads & blogs for storing the data, I get to know about several ways to do this.

   a. Saving NSDefaults

   b. SQLite Database

   c. Storing it as plist

   b. Core data

I am not sure on any of the above. Please let me know on which is the best way (should be none of the above i guess - ;) ) to store the XML data for later use along with the time, so that I can check it and update it on later stage.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You could implement your parser so that it creates and populates Core-Data NSManagedObjects. These can then be persisted to data store quite simply and can be used by other layers in your app - such as the view - as you would normal objects.

Core-Data can persist these managed objects to a number of different data store types - including SQLite. Once persisted the application can load the data from the Core-Data data store instead of re-parsing the XML.

I have successfully implemented a similar solution myself and would recommend reading Apple's Core Data Tutorial to get you started.