How to use the first character as a section name

Question

I\'m using Core Data for a table view, and I\'d like to use the first letter of each of my results as the section header (so I can get the section index on the side). Is the

Answer 1

There may be a more elegant way to do this, but I recently had the same problem and came up with this solution.

First, I defined a transient property on the objects I was indexing called firstLetterOfName, and wrote the getter into the .m file for the object. e.x.

- (NSString *)uppercaseFirstLetterOfName {
    [self willAccessValueForKey:@"uppercaseFirstLetterOfName"];
    NSString *stringToReturn = [[self.name uppercaseString] substringToIndex:1];
    [self didAccessValueForKey:@"uppercaseFirstLetterOfName"];
    return stringToReturn;
}

Next, I set up my fetch request/entities to use this property.

NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init];
NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Object" inManagedObjectContext:dataContext];
[request setEntity:entity];
[NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"name" ascending:YES selector:@selector(caseInsensitiveCompare:)];
NSArray *sortDescriptors = [NSArray arrayWithObject:sortDescriptor];
[request setSortDescriptors:sortDescriptors];

Side note, apropos of nothing: Be careful with NSFetchedResultsController — it's not exactly fully baked yet IMHO, and any situation beyond the simple cases listed in the documentation, you will probably be better off doing it the 'old fashioned' way.