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This document explains how to perform a lightweight migration in Core Data, which is used for making specific changes to the data model such as adding or renaming entities. It outlines the steps required, including enabling the lightweight migration option, creating a new data model version, and modifying that version to fit certain patterns. If the changes exceed lightweight migration capabilities, a manual migration would be necessary.

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3 views12 pages

Untitled2

This document explains how to perform a lightweight migration in Core Data, which is used for making specific changes to the data model such as adding or renaming entities. It outlines the steps required, including enabling the lightweight migration option, creating a new data model version, and modifying that version to fit certain patterns. If the changes exceed lightweight migration capabilities, a manual migration would be necessary.

Uploaded by

Offcloud
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to perform a lightweight

migration in Core Data


Learn the possibilities Core
Data provides to migrate model
changes.
19 Dec 2022 · 4 min read

core data
persistence
xcode
ios
Natascha Fadeeva
iOS dev & creator of this site

A database migration is
performed whenever we need
to make changes to the data
model.
For a specific set of changes,
Core Data can perform an
almost automatic data
migration, also called
lightweight migration.
Examples of those changes are
adding, renaming or deleting
entities, attributes or
relationships or changing the
relationship type.
When changes to the data
model exceed the capabilities of
a lightweight migration, we
need to do a heavyweight i.e.
manual migration.
In this guide, we are going to
look at how to perform a
lightweight migration in Core
Data.

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Steps to perform a lightweight
migration in Core Data
To perform a lightweight
migration in Core Data,
basically the following steps are
required:
Enabling the lightweight
migration option when setting
up the Core Data stack.
Creating a new data model
version.
Modifying the new data model
version. For some changes,
setting renaming identifiers.
Let's look at these steps in more
detail.
1. Enabling the lightweight
migration option when setting
up the Core Data stack
When we use
the NSPersistentContainer clas
s to create and manage the Core
Data stack, we don't need to do
any additional setup work, the
lightweight migration is
automatically activated for us.
When building our own Core
data stack, we can activate
lightweight migration by
passing in an options dictionary
when adding a persistent store.
let coordinator =
NSPersistentStoreCoordinator(
managedObjectModel:
managedObjectModel)
let options =
[NSMigratePersistentStoresAuto
maticallyOption: true,

NSInferMappingModelAutomati
callyOption: true]
do {
try
coordinator.addPersistentStore(
ofType: NSSQLiteStoreType,
configurationName: nil, at: url,
options: options)
} catch {
// handle error
}
2. Creating a new data model
version
To perform automatic
lightweight migration, Core
Data generates an inferred
mapping model. To do that,
Core Data needs the new and
the old data model.
For that reason, changing a data
model that already has been
shipped to users would result in
a data base error. To avoid that,
we can create a new model
version by selecting Editor >
Add Model Version in Xcode's
menu. This will add a
new .xcdatamodel file to our
project:

Adding a new data model


version.
After adding a new version, we
can set it to the current version
in Xcode's File Inspector.
3. Modifying the new data
model version
Now, we can start making
changes to the new data model.
For Core Data to be able to
create an inferred mapping
model, the changes must fit a
specific pattern, for example:
Adding or deleting entities,
attributes or relationships.
Renaming entities, attributes or
relationships by setting the
renaming identifier to the name
of the corresponding property
or entity in the previous model
in Xcode's Data Model inspector.
Changing required attributes to
optional attributes or vice versa
with a default value.
Changing a relationship from
to-one to to-many, or a
nonordered to an ordered
relationship.
To check in advance whether
Core Data can infer the
mapping model, we can use
the inferredMappingModel(for
SourceModel:destinationModel:
) method of NSMappingModel:
let inferredModel = try?
NSMappingModel.inferredMapp
ingModel(forSourceModel:
managedObjectModel,
destinationModel:
managedObjectModel)
if (inferredModel != nil) {
// Lightweight migration is
possible
}
If our changes exceed the
capabilities of an automatic
migration, we would need to
perform a heavyweight e.g.
manual migration. But this is a
topic for another day.

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