How do I copy or move an NSManagedObject from one context to another?

Question

I have what I assume is a fairly standard setup, with one scratchpad MOC which is never saved (containing a bunch of objects downloaded from the web) and another permanent MOC which persists objects. When the user selects an object from scratchMOC to add to her library, I want to either 1) remove the object from scratchMOC and insert into permanentMOC, or 2) copy the object into permanentMOC. The Core Data FAQ says I can copy an object like this:

NSManagedObjectID *objectID = [managedObject objectID];
NSManagedObject *copy = [context2 objectWithID:objectID];

(In this case, context2 would be permanentMOC.) However, when I do this, the copied object is faulted; the data is initially unresolved. When it does get resolved, later, all of the values are nil; none of the data (attributes or relationships) from the original managedObject are actually copied or referenced. Therefore I can't see any difference between using this objectWithID: method and just inserting an entirely new object into permanentMOC using insertNewObjectForEntityForName:.

I realize I can create a new object in permanentMOC and manually copy each key-value pair from the old object, but I'm not very happy with that solution. (I have a number of different managed objects for which I have this problem, so I don't want to have to write and update copy: methods for all of them as I continue developing.) Is there a better way?

Answer 1

First, having more than one NSManagedObjectContext on a single thread is not a standard configuration. 99% of the time you only need one context and that will solve this situation for you.

Why do you feel you need more than one NSManagedObjectContext?

Update

That is actually one of the few use cases that I have seen where that makes sense. To do this, you need to do a recursive copy of the object from one context to the other. The workflow would be as follows:

1. Create new object in persistent context
2. get a dictionary of the attributes from the source object (use -dictionaryWithValuesForKeys and -[NSEntityDescription attributesByName] to do this.
3. set the dictionary of values onto the target object (using -setValuesForKeysWithDictionary)
4. If you have relationships, you will need to do this copy recursively and walk the relationships either hard coded (to avoid some circular logic) or by using the -[NSEntityDescription relationshipsByName]

As mentioned by another, you can download the sample code from my book from The Pragmatic Programmers Core Data Book and see one solution to this problem. Of course in the book I discuss it more in depth :)