iphone: Caching an NSMutableArray?

Question

I'm currently writing a Twitter client for iPhone and need a way to cache the public timeline. The data fetched is stored as 'Status' objects in an NSMutableArray.

The NSMutableArray stores 20 objects at a time.

What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

You will probably want to use Core Data. You'll need to create an entity for each tweet, and then store that in your database. There is quite a lot of documentation and sample code on Core Data out there; start at Apple's Samples page.

Answer 2

If you want to start quickly try SQLitePersistentObjects.

Answer 3

If you don't want to play with one of the frameworks already mentioned (SQLitePersistentObjects and CoreData), you could implement your own using the NSCoding protocol on your status objects. The array should already implement NSCoding for archiving/unarchiving.

Answer 4

If you never plan to go over 20 objects you could (slightly) violate some rules from the gods of apple, and use NSUserDefaults - likely the easiest one to implement, but as the name implies, made for things like user settings, so don't use for big piles of info.

Disclaimer: If you know how to use the others, use them, this one is kinda the lazy way if you don't want to learn something better but more difficult.