How to join two strings for NSPredicate, ie firstname and lastname

ios, iphone, nspredicate, nsstring, objective-c

Solution

Try this,

NSString *text = @"John Smi";
NSString *searchText = [text stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]];

NSArray *array = [searchText componentsSeparatedByString:@" "];
NSString *firstName = searchText;
NSString *lastName = searchText;
NSPredicate *predicate = nil;

if ([array count] > 1) {
    firstName = array[0];
    lastName = array[1];
    predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"(firstName CONTAINS[cd] %@ AND lastName CONTAINS[cd] %@) OR (firstName CONTAINS[cd] %@ AND lastName CONTAINS[cd] %@)", firstName, lastName, lastName, firstName];
} else {
    predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"firstName CONTAINS[cd] %@ OR lastName CONTAINS[cd] %@", firstName, lastName];
}

NSArray *filteredArray = [people filteredArrayUsingPredicate:predicate];
NSLog(@"%@", filteredArray);

Output:

(
        {
        firstName = John;
        lastName = Smith;
    }
)

Here text represents the searched text. The advantage with the above is, even if you pass `text = @"Smi Joh";` or `text = @"John ";` or `text = @" smi";` or `text = @"joh smi ";`, it will still show the above output.

Problem

I have a `Person` Object which has two `NSString` properties; `firstName and lastName`. I'm currently using an `NSPredicate` like so: ``` NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"(firstName contains[cd] %@) OR (lastName contains[cd] %@)", searchText, searchText]; ``` So, for example, say I'm searching for the name `"John Smith"`. In my search bar if I type `"Joh"`, then `John Smith` will appear as an option. This is good and fine, but if I type in `"John Sm"` it will go blank. How can I join firstName and lastName in the `predicate` so if I was searching for `"John Sm"` then `John Smith` would still appear as an option. I hope this makes sense. Thanks. EDIT: To add a bit more clarification, I'm using the `SearchDisplayController` delegate method: ``` -(void)filterContentForSearchText:(NSString *)searchText scope:(NSString *)scope; ``` and I'm using the `predicate` like so: ``` newArray = [personObjectArray filteredArrayUsingPredicate:predicate]; ```

Original source