Objective-c Best Choice For Saving Data

I'm currently looking for the best way to save data in my iPhone application; data that will persist between opening and closing of the application. I've looked into archiving usi

Solution 1:

Core Data is very powerful and easy to use once you get over the initial learning curve. here's a good tutorial to get you started - clicky

Solution 2:

As an easy and powerful alternative to CoreData, look into ActiveRecord for Objective-C. https://github.com/aptiva/activerecord

Solution 3:

I'd go with NSKeyedArchiver. Sounds like the problem is you're not organizing your graph properly.

You technically have a list of lists, but you're only saving the inner-nested list.

You should be added the list to a "super" list, and then archiving the super-list.

CoreData / SQL seems a bit much from what you described.

Solution 4:

Also you can try this framework. It's very simple and easy to use. It's based on ActiveRecord pattern and allow to use migrations, relationships, validations, and more.

It use sqlite3 only, without CoreData, but you don't need to use raw sql or create tables manually.

Just describe your iActiveRecord and enjoy.

Solution 5:

You want to check out this tutorial by Ray Wenderlich on Getting started with CoreData. Its short and goes over the basics of CoreData.

Essentially you only want to look at plists if you have a small amount of data to store. A simple list of settings or preferences. Anything larger than that and it breaks down specifically around performance. There is a great video on iTunesU where the developers at LinkedIn describe their performance metrics between plists and CoreData.

Archiving works, but is going to be a lot of work to store and retrieve your data, as well as put the performance challenge on your back. So I wouldn't go there. I would use CoreData. Its extremely simple to get started with and if you understand the objects in this stack overflow question then you know everything you need to get going.