Best way to implement Enums with Core Data

Question

What is the best way to bind Core Data entities to enum values so that I am able to assign a type property to the entity? In other words, I have an entity called Item<

Answer 1

I have done this a lot and find the following form to be useful:

// accountType
public var account:AccountType {
    get {
        willAccessValueForKey(Field.Account.rawValue)
        defer { didAccessValueForKey(Field.Account.rawValue) }
        return primitiveAccountType.flatMap { AccountType(rawValue: $0) } ?? .New }
    set {
        willChangeValueForKey(Field.Account.rawValue)
        defer { didChangeValueForKey(Field.Account.rawValue) }
        primitiveAccountType = newValue.rawValue }}
@NSManaged private var primitiveAccountType: String?

In this case, the enum is pretty simple:

public enum AccountType: String {
    case New = "new"
    case Registered = "full"
}

and call it pedantic, but I use enums for field names, like this:

public enum Field:String {

    case Account = "account"
}

Since this can get laborious for complex data models, I wrote a code generator that consumes the MOM / entities to spit out all the mappings. My inputs end up being a dictionary from Table/Row to Enum type. While I was at it, I also generated JSON serialization code. I've done this for very complex models and it has turned out to be a big time saver.