NSPredicate: Fetch one of each kind

Question

I want to create an NSFetchRequest for objects like this:

The Object is Car which has an attribute color

Answer 1

If you are targeting iOS 4.0 or later and not using the Core-Data SQL store why not use predicateWithBlock:?

The following will generate the NSFetchRequest you want.

- (NSFetchRequest*) fetchRequestForSingleInstanceOfEntity:(NSString*)entityName groupedBy:(NSString*)attributeName
{
  __block NSMutableSet *uniqueAttributes = [NSMutableSet set];

  NSPredicate *filter = [NSPredicate predicateWithBlock:^(id evaluatedObject, NSDictionary *bindings) {
    if( [uniqueAttributes containsObject:[evaluatedObject valueForKey:attributeName]] )
      return NO;

    [uniqueAttributes addObject:[evaluatedObject valueForKey:attributeName]];
    return YES;
  }];

  NSFetchRequest *req = [NSFetchRequest fetchRequestWithEntityName:entityName];
  req.predicate = filter;

  return req;
}

You could then create a new method to execute the fetch and return the results you want.

- (NSArray*) fetchOneInstanceOfEntity:(NSString*)entityName groupedBy:(NSString*)attributeName
{
  NSFetchRequest *req = [self fetchRequestForSingleInstanceOfEntity:entityName groupedBy:attributeName];

  // perform fetch
  NSError *fetchError = nil;
  NSArray *fetchResults = [_context executeFetchRequest:req error:&fetchError];

  // fetch results
  if( !fetchResults ) {
    // Handle error ...
    return nil;
  }

  return fetchResults;
}