How can I preload a Core Data database as a part of the build process for an iPhone project?

Question

Here's my situation, and it's probably fairly common but I have yet to find a satisfactory way to do it.

I am developing an iPhone application that will have a read-only, pre-loaded Core Data database stored in the app's bundle. I completely understand how to deploy such a thing. That isn't my problem.

My problem is How do I pre-load the Core Data database as a part of my build process? I can imagine several ways to do this, but I'm looking for a solution that integrates best with Xcode and has the least amount of hackery.

So far, my #1 choice is to create a project for a command-line tool that shares the Core Data Model with the iPhone project. This tool could then be run as a part of a shell script phase of the iPhone project's build process. What sucks is that, because one is an iPhone project and the other an OS X command-line tool, they cannot share the same project or even be referenced from one to the other. They must be completely separate. :(

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Depends on where you are getting the data from. Sounds like you are pulling the data from somewhere else automatically. In that case I would build a command line tool as you have guessed but don't rebuild it. Just create a command line tool and then execute it in a shell script as part of the build process for the iPhone application.

There should not be any reason to re-build that command line tool unless your model is updated.

Answer 2

because one is an iPhone project and the other an OS X command-line tool, they cannot share the same project or even be referenced from one to the other

That's a limitation in the new Xcode; it used to be perfectly possible to build a command line tool to run tests on OSX (and, in fact, it still works with xcodebuilder, just not in Xcode itself).

EDIT: A very terrible hack is to use PyObjC so you can run things in Python, but that's probably not suitable if you need to use compiled things.

A workaround is to do the data conversion on first launch.