Way to Prepopulate Core Data with Certain Data

Usually I populate my core data with data from internet.

But say I want to prepopulate it w开发者_Python百科ith data without downloading it from internet.

Say I want to store all cities, or all tags first.

What would be the standard way to do so?

Should I store the cities on plist? Should I hardcode inserting all data? Should I set a variable in coredata to tell whether it has been initialized or not?

What do you guys do?

If it's a lot of data, the fastest way is to provide a populated store. Assuming you're using a sqlite database, you can simply use the Simulator to generate it once, and then put that in your app.

If it's a small amount of data, I'd insert the data at first start, while reading it from some form of xml, csv, or even hardcoded (script-generated) insert statements. It all depends on the situation.

When using Core Data not read-only, you should copy the database to a place where you're allowed to write, when the app starts for the first time. In a read only situation, you can just use the database from the bundle.