Moving from NSUserDefaults to Core Data

Thanks, Patrick, for tagging Amit!

Amit, thanks so much for your help!! I was dreading the idea of trying to move all data from NSUserDefaults to something else. I really appreciate your time!

Actually, Amit Bijlani , would you be able to describe the best wait to easily access the NSUserDefaults plist? Do I have to create my own plist and copy the NSUserDefaults' contents in order to have a plist accessible for iCloud to sync, or can I directly get the NSUserDefaults plist from the bundle?

Thanks again for your help!

You cannot or should not directly access the NSUserDefaults plist, you would need to create your own plist. It also depends on your needs, you could probably get away with using NSUbiquitousKeyValueStore which has a limit of 1mb. If so, then you can use SDCloudUserDefaults. If not then see this: iCloud KeyValue Storage

Thanks for the reply Amit. That is actually what got me in trouble in the first place. Since the content in my NSUserDefaults file is actually small amounts of "user generated content" Apple will not let me use iCloud Key-Vlaue storage and is insisting I use NSDocument Storage. I dont want to have to rewrite how my app locally saves and works with data (setting and retrieving a array of dictionaries for a key in NSUserDefaults) so I want to take that info and put it in a plist that uses NSDocument to sync. This way I make Apple happy because I am not using KeyValue storage and am instead syncing a plist file. I think I just got what I want with this:

NSString *destPath = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) lastObject]; destPath = [destPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Data.plist"];

            // If the file doesn't exist in the Documents Folder, copy it.
            NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];

            if (![fileManager fileExistsAtPath:destPath]) {
                NSString *sourcePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Data" ofType:@"plist"];
                [fileManager copyItemAtPath:sourcePath toPath:destPath error:nil];
            }

            [sortableArray writeToFile:destPath atomically:YES];
            contents = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:destPath];
            NSLog(@"the contents array is %@", contents);

Where sortableArray is the array that is being stored in NSUserDefaults and being used throughout the application to persist data and contents array is there as a verification that my sortableArray is saved in the plist that is newly placed in the documents directory. This Data.plist from the documents directory would then use NSDocument to sync.

Am I correct in saying this and would this solution work?

Sorry about having such a hassle-some question. I truly appreciate all your help!