Setting UITableView headers from NSFetchedResultsController

Question

I have a `NSFetchedResultsController` which is fetching objects from a `NSManagedObjectContext`. I'm using the results to populate a UITableView. I'm filtering with these two sort descriptors. ``` NSSortDescriptor *lastOpened = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"lastOpened" ascending:NO]; NSSortDescriptor *titleDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"title" ascending:YES]; ``` And when I create the `NSFetchedResultsController`, I sort the sections via `sectionNameKeyPath:@"lastOpened"`. Right now my sections display the standard format like 2009-07-02 20:51:27 -0400 and since no two can be opened at the same time, they are all unique. I need them to cover range of date/times, such as an entire day, and be in a human-readable form. Something like Thursday, July 2. Thanks! Edit: This is all inside a `UITableViewController`. Here's some more code. ``` - (NSString *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView titleForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section { // Display the dates as se…

Accepted Answer

I ended up adding a new property `day` to my `NSManagedObject` subclass to get a formatted date string.

```
@property (nonatomic, readonly) NSString * day;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSDateFormatter * dateFormatter
```

Sythesize the dateFomatter. @synthesize dateFormatter;

I initialize the date formatter in awakeFromFetch and awakeFromInsert.

```
self.dateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[self.dateFormatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterMediumStyle];
```

The accessor for `day`.

```
- (NSString *)day {
  NSDate *date = self.startDate;
  return [self.dateFormatter stringFromDate:date];
}
```

I then set my section name keypath to look at `day`; you shouldn't need to make any changes to your sort descriptors.

Setting UITableView headers from NSFetchedResultsController

Solution

Problem