In iOS 11, how to make core data searchable in core spotlight

Question

As mentioned at WWDC, iOS 11 should have support to index CoreData so that it is searchable via Spotlight. This is the WWDC presentation:

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/210/

However, after watching the video and looking at docs, I still have no idea how to setup my core data objects so they are searchable from the phones spotlight search.

I guess the main questions are:

1.) How do you actually set which attributes of a certain object type are searchable.

2.) How do you setup a NSCoreDataCoreSpotlightDelegate and get it to process the data? It looks like NSPersistentStore has a property

var coreSpotlightExporter: NSCoreDataCoreSpotlightDelegate

but it's readyonly :(

I couldn't find anything that explained this stuff clearly. Thanks!

Janeanjaneczka

See my answer for how to use NSCoreDataCoreSpotlightDelegate. – Papillote

Answer 1

You do not set coreSpotlightExporter directly. Instead, set the NSCoreDataCoreSpotlightExporter option with your export delegate:

container.persistentStoreDescriptions.forEach {
    $0.setOption(MyCoreDataCoreSpotlightDelegate(forStoreWith:$0, model: container.managedObjectModel), forKey:NSCoreDataCoreSpotlightExporter)
}

I added this code before calling loadPersistentStores(completionHandler:).

To set attributes and entities, you update the appropriate properties for NSAttributeDescription and NSEntityDescription or in your .xcdatamodeld in the UI.

Erena

The one would need to check the spotlight support in the UI for properties and display expression for entities. – Mahatma