Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Note: I did receive the example code from the author of this book. He is working with the Publisher to get the code available on their website. Meantime he noted he is glad to make it available simply by emailing him a request.
Got my copy yesterday and have been skimming through it. Recently started another book on the same topic by APress. Both appear to be good books but this one I have been waiting over a year for. I am not disappointed in the wait because the book is up to date on the latest iOS at the time of publishing. Just glancing through the book, I can tell it is written by two iOS veteran programmers who are there to guide the reader with best practices and a lot of things to watch out for. For example, there is a section describing various ways of storing binary large objects (BLOBS) and the authors present a handful of options and explain when each can be useful and what to watch out for with respect to memory management and future needs to adjust the object model with new versions.
I plan to update this review after working through the sample code and reading the book cover to cover. But for now, I can say that in the handful of pages I have read over, the book has well paid for itself in helping me understand how to write a professional class application. I am fairly new to iPhone development having only a single app for sale on Apple's App Store. If I had this book during development of that application, it would be a far better app in many respects related to data storage. Looking forward to my next app which will use Core Data with the help provided in this book. Thanks to the authors!
2nd Update (7/6/11)
I felt compelled to update my review and also to comment on the other reviewer who noted that chapter 5 is confusing. Well, that reviewer states correctly that chapter five takes chapter 4 and reworks the code. Chapter five shows how to use an NSFetchedResultsController, a class that works as a go-between of in the example a SQLite database and the in-memory object context "object graph". It is a difficult concept to grasp but nonetheless, I think the authors do a good job showing the standard methods used by Core Data. I think the authors intent is to build up to showing the more excellent way of working with data by way of showing a more primitive way first. Chapter four used a basic array to hold the data but that would not scale well with an application that had hundreds or thousands of data objects. Yes they could have probably went straight into the chapter 5 content but in my opinion, since the whole subject is rather complex to grasp, leaving out chapter 4 would have made it very difficult to understand the technology explained in chapters five and onward. I am now nearing the end of this book and still feel that it was a very good investment. I am about to jump back over to completing the Apress book on Core Data which I bought at the same time as this book and will later post back if I feel this book is as good or better. I find this book to be a very valuable desk reference. Both books do require a good understanding of Objective-C and are written with the expectation that the reader is well versed in using the XCode IDE. So if you don't know Objective-C or the basics of working in XCode, I recommend getting that foundation before jumping into either of these books.
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Core Data for iOS: Developing Data-Driven Applications for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touchToday, virtually every non-trivial iPhone and iPad app must manage data—quickly, smoothly, reliably, and with minimal impact on the CPU to conserve battery life. Core Data, Apple's ready-made data persistence layer, can help you achieve all these goals. In Core Data for iOS, two leading iOS developers teach you the entire Core Data framework from the ground up. Writing for intermediate-to-advanced iOS developers, Tim Isted and Tom Harrington thoroughly explain how Core Data is used on iOS devices, introduce each of its primary classes, and show how they interact to provide amazing functionality with minimal configuration. You'll learn how to store, fetch, and validate data; provide it efficiently to views; and much more. Isted and Harrington first give you a firm grounding in the technology, and then present real-world examples. They present multiple sample projects, as well as a start-to-finish, chapter-length case study. Coverage includes• Understanding Core Data's features, classes, and interactions• Using Core Data in MVC-based iOS app development• Mapping relational data to object models, and building them with Xcode 4's Data Modeler• Working with managed objects and using UITableView to display them• Creating predicates to match numbers, data, and objects• Maintaining compatibility across versions of an app's data model• Tracking managed object contexts across view controllers• Using Core Data's automatic Undo functionality • Integrating abstract entities, entity inheritance, and multiple view controllers into a complete app• Optimizing for iOS devices' tight memory limits• Diagnosing and fixing common Core Data problems Introducing Addison-Wesley's new Core Frameworks Series, written for experienced iOS developers by world-class Mac and iOS developers, these are the first comprehensive, code-rich reference guides to Apple's Core Frameworks.
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