What's the correct way to ship static (read-only) data in Core Data persistent store?

Question

I want to ship static read-only data for use in my Core Data model. The problem is that there are obviously different persistent store types and I don't know if the format of those types is supposed to be opaque or if I'm supposed to be able to construct them by hand.

Right now I just have a plist and it's very small (maybe 30 entries total).

Should I just write code to import the plist into my data store when the app is first installed, or is there some way I can ship a hand-constructed initial version of the data store file?

(I'm using the default sqlite persistent store.)

Answer 1

I would not try to hand-construct it, but you certainly should execute an import and save a final Core Data SQLite file to ship with your app.

I plan to write a small mac utility (using the same data model) to generate the Core Data SQLite file for my iPhone app (the import is actually from a web server). Then, I will add the file that was persisted by the utility into my iPhone app's project.

Answer 2

To add a bit to the answer to my own question, I noticed that the Recipes sample code application comes with a default sqlite backing store:

// If the expected store doesn't exist, copy the default store.
if (![fileManager fileExistsAtPath:storePath]) {
    NSString *defaultStorePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Recipes" ofType:@"sqlite"];
    if (defaultStorePath) {
        [fileManager copyItemAtPath:defaultStorePath toPath:storePath error:NULL];
    }
}

But then again, for another purpose it comes with some static read-only data in a plist file! (TemperatureData.plist) So go figure....