Accessing Core Data entity name from NSArrayController -arrangedObjects

Question

Given an NSArrayController "objController" which is bound to the moc in IB, shouldn't the following work? And given that it doesn't seem to work, how do I go about retrieving an entity's name from my NSArrayController?

for (NSManagedObject *thisObj in [objController arrangedObjects]) 
{
    NSEntityDescription *description = [thisObj entity];
    NSString *entityName = [description name];
    // do something with entityName...
    NSString *entityAttributeValue = [thisObj valueForKey:@"attributeKey"];
    // do something with entityAttributeValue...
}

The "objController" is IBOutlet-ed and set to "Entity Name" Mode, with the entity name set to an entity defined in the model. This entity does have child entities (and thus the reason I would like to access its description name, since the NSArrayController could store many different child entity types), but the presence of child entities doesn't seem to make a difference anyway.

... in the debugger, it looks like "description" is a valid NSEntityDescription object, but "entityName" gets set to a _PFEncodedString object, with no content. However, "entityAttributeValue" is just fine, populated with the correct value stored in Core Data.

One way around this, I suppose, would be to custom-class all my CD entities, then use -isKindOfClass to get the information I need.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

_PFEncodedString is a (private) concrete subclass of NSString and can therefore be used as any other NSString.