How to restore the user-location in a drill down UITableViewController structure?

Question

I have a CoreData model that contains Levels which can again contain childLevels.

I represent each level with a UITableViewController listing all childLevels. When a user taps a row a new UITableViewController is pushed onto the navigationController. No problem here.

How would I go about storing the user location within this table structure. Is there a best practice for doing this? I have no problem doing this if the depth of the structure was known, but somehow puzzled how to approach this with a undefined depth.

Should I store the NSIndexPath tapped by the user into an array and write it to disk?

Answer 1

Instead of using the NSIndexPaths tapped by the user I went with the underlying NSManagedObjects which is a lot safer (in case number or sorting of objects change) and faster (because I do not need the whole fetchRequest and or view).

I subclassed the UINavigationController and did the following.

When pushing a new TableViewController for a level (stored in parentLevel) I append this to an array in UserDefaults:

- (void)pushViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController animated:(BOOL)animated {
   [super pushViewController:viewController animated:animated];

   if([viewController isKindOfClass:[LevelTableViewController class]]){
       NSMutableArray *array = [NSMutableArray arrayWithArray:[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:LevelTablesPersistentKey]];
       NSManagedObject *obj = [(LevelTableViewController*)viewController parentLevel];

       if(obj!=nil){
         [array addObject:[[obj objectID].URIRepresentation absoluteString]];
       } 

       [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:[NSArray arrayWithArray:array] objectForKey:LevelTablesPersistentKey];

   }
}

When I pop a viewController I simply remove the last entry from that array:

- (UIViewController *) popViewControllerAnimated:(BOOL)animated{
  UIViewController *vc = [super popViewControllerAnimated:animated];
  // remove last object
  if([vc isKindOfClass:[LevelTableViewController class]]){
     NSMutableArray *array = [NSMutableArray arrayWithArray:[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:LevelTablesPersistentKey]];
     [array removeLastObject];
     [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:[NSArray arrayWithArray:array] objectForKey:LevelTablesPersistentKey];
  }

  return vc;
}

I can then use this array when initializing the NavigationController when the app is next started to rebuild the tree:

- (LevelNavigationController*) initWithRootViewController:(LevelTableViewController*)vc {
if(self = [super initWithRootViewController:vc]){
    // Recreate structure from UserDefaults
    NSArray *array = [NSArray arrayWithArray:[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:LevelTablesPersistentKey]];
    [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:nil forKey:LevelTablesPersistentKey]; // set the array to nil -> will be rebuild when pushing viewcontrollers onto navigation stack

    NSPersistentStoreCoordinator *persistentStoreCoordinator = ...; // pointer to coordinator 
            NSManagedObjectContext * managedObjectContext = ...; // pointer to your context
    for (NSString *objId in array) {
        NSManagedObjectID *mobjId=[persistentStoreCoordinator managedObjectIDForURIRepresentation:[NSURL URLWithString:objId]];
        if(mobjId!=nil){

            NSManagedObject *obj = nil;
            NSError **err = nil;
            obj = [managedObjectContext objectWithID:mobjId];

            if(err==nil && obj){
                if([obj.entity.name isEqualToString:@"Level"]){
                    // push level

                    LevelTableViewController *nextLevel = [[LevelTableViewController alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewStylePlain];
                    nextLevel.parentLevel = (Level*)obj;
                    [self pushViewController:nextLevel animated:NO];
                    [nextLevel release];
                } 
            } 
        }
    }

}

return self;

}