Core data, how to get NSManagedObject's ObjectId when NSFetchRequest returns NSDictionaryResultType?

Question

I have an NSFetchRequest which is returning the objects' properties in an NSDictionaryResultType. Is it possible to also get the objects' ObjectId within this dictionary? Otherwise I will need to run the query with a return type of NSManagedObjectResultType which is much slower for a large number of returned items.

Answer 1

Yes you can, using the very nifty but badly-documented NSExpressionDescription class. You need to add a properly-configured NSExpressionDescription object to the array of NSPropertyDescription objects you set via setPropertiesToFetch: for your NSFetchRequest.

For example:

NSExpressionDescription* objectIdDesc = [[NSExpressionDescription new] autorelease];
objectIdDesc.name = @"objectID";
objectIdDesc.expression = [NSExpression expressionForEvaluatedObject];
objectIdDesc.expressionResultType = NSObjectIDAttributeType;

myFetchRequest.propertiesToFetch = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:objectIdDesc, anotherPropertyDesc, yetAnotherPropertyDesc, nil];
NSArray* fetchResults = [myContext executeFetchRequest:myFetchRequest error:&fetchError];

You should then have a @"objectID" key in the the dictionaries you get back from your fetch request.