Hi there,

in my iPhone application I am using simple Core Data Model with two entities (Item and Property):

Item
name
properties

Property
name
value
item

Item has one attribute (name) and one one-to-many-relationship (properties). Its inverse relationship is item. Property has two attributes the according inverse relationship.

Now I want to show my data in table views on two levels. The first one lists all items; when one row is selected, a new UITableViewController is pushed onto my UINavigationController's stack. The new UITableView is supposed to show all properties (i.e. their names) of the selected item.

To achieve this, I use a NSFetchedResultsController stored in an instance variable. On the first level, everything works fine when setting up the NSFetchedResultsController like this:

-(NSFetchedResultsController *) fetchedResultsController {
    if (fetchedResultsController) return fetchedResultsController;

    // goal: tell the FRC to fetch all item objects.
    NSFetchRequest *fetch = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init];

    NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Item" inManagedObjectContext:self.moContext];
    [fetch setEntity:entity];

    NSSortDescriptor *sort = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"name" ascending:YES];
    [fetch setSortDescriptors:[NSArray arrayWithObject:sort]];

    [fetch setFetchBatchSize:10];

    NSFetchedResultsController *frController = [[NSFetchedResultsController alloc] initWithFetchRequest:fetch managedObjectContext:self.moContext sectionNameKeyPath:nil cacheName:@"cache"];
    self.fetchedResultsController = frController;
    fetchedResultsController.delegate = self;

    [sort release];
    [frController release];
    [fetch release];

    return fetchedResultsController;
}

However, on the second-level UITableView, I seem to do something wrong. I implemented the fetchedresultsController in a similar way:

-(NSFetchedResultsController *) fetchedResultsController {
    if (fetchedResultsController) return fetchedResultsController;

    // goal: tell the FRC to fetch all property objects that belong to the previously selected item
    NSFetchRequest *fetch = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init];

    // fetch all Property entities.
    NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Property" inManagedObjectContext:self.moContext];
    [fetch setEntity:entity];

    // limit to those entities that belong to the particular item
    NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"item.name like '%@'",self.item.name]];
    [fetch setPredicate:predicate];

    // sort it. Boring.
    NSSortDescriptor *sort = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"name" ascending:YES];
    [fetch setSortDescriptors:[NSArray arrayWithObject:sort]];

    NSError *error = nil;
    NSLog(@"%d entities found.",[self.moContext countForFetchRequest:fetch error:&error]);
    // logs "3 entities found."; I added those properties before. See below for my saving "problem".
    if (error) NSLog("%@",error);
    // no error, thus nothing logged.

    [fetch setFetchBatchSize:20];

    NSFetchedResultsController *frController = [[NSFetchedResultsController alloc] initWithFetchRequest:fetch managedObjectContext:self.moContext sectionNameKeyPath:nil cacheName:@"cache"];
    self.fetchedResultsController = frController;
    fetchedResultsController.delegate = self;

    [sort release];
    [frController release];
    [fetch release];

    return fetchedResultsController;
}

Now it's getting weird. The above NSLog statement returns me the correct number of properties for the selected item. However, the UITableViewDelegate method tells me that there are no properties:

-(NSInteger) tableView:(UITableView *)table numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
    id <NSFetchedResultsSectionInfo> sectionInfo = [[self.fetchedResultsController sections] objectAtIndex:section];
    NSLog(@"Found %d properties for item \"%@\". Should have found %d.",[sectionInfo numberOfObjects], self.item.name, [self.item.properties count]);
    // logs "Found 0 properties for item "item". Should have found 3."
    return [sectionInfo numberOfObjects];
}

The same implementation works fine on the first level.

It's getting even weirder. I implemented some kind of UI to add properties. I create a new Property instance via Property *p = [NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"Property" inManagedObjectContext:self.moContext];, set up the relationships and call [self.moContext save:&error]. This seems to work, as error is still nil and the object gets saved (I can see the number of properties when logging the Item instance, see above). However, the delegate methods are not fired. This seems to me due to the possibly messed up fetchRequest(Controller).

Any ideas? Did I mess up the second fetch request? Is this the right way to fetch all entities in a to-many-relationship for a particular instance at all?