overwrite a core data binary data item - arrays

Question

My swift code below saves 3 images. What I want to do is overwrite iamgedata2 is func press. Imagedata2 should be replaced with Gwen. So the order should be Gwen Gwen Gwen instead of Gwen gwen2 Gwen. I don't know what really to put in func press to achieve this goal.
import UIKit; import CoreData
class ViewController: UIViewController {
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
view.backgroundColor = .orange
let gwen = UIImage(named: "blank")
let gwen2 = UIImage(named: "g.jpg")
if let imageData = gwen.self?.pngData() {
CoredataHandler.shareInstance.saveImage(data: imageData)
}
if let imageData2 = gwen2.self?.pngData() {
CoredataHandler.shareInstance.saveImage(data: imageData2)
}
if let imageData3 = gwen.self?.pngData() {
CoredataHandler.shareInstance.saveImage(data: imageData3)
}
}
#objc func press(){
CoredataHandler.shareInstance.saveImage(data: 1)
return
}
}
class CoredataHandler : NSManagedObject {
static let shareInstance = CoredataHandler()
let context = (UIApplication.shared.delegate as! AppDelegate).persistentContainer.viewContext
private class func getContext() -> NSManagedObjectContext {
let appDelegate = UIApplication.shared.delegate as! AppDelegate
return appDelegate.persistentContainer.viewContext
}
func saveImage(data: Data) {
let imageInstance = Information(context: context)
imageInstance.pic = data
do {
try context.save()
} catch {
print(error.localizedDescription)
}
}
}

Answer 1

If you want a Core Data entity that can store more than one image, you have a few options:
Declare multiple image properties
Instead of just having a pic property, have more than one. As many as you like. Name them pic1, pic2, pic3, etc, or whatever seems best for your app. In code, read or write whichever makes sense at the time.
This is easy but not flexible, since your code can only save up to the number of attributes you declare in the model.
Use an array property with transformable
With a transformable attribute you can store any data that can be converted to a Data. In your case you'd do something like this:
Two things to notice: The type is transformable, and the custom class is [Data]. Xcode will generate code where the property type is [Data]?. You can save as many Data blobs as you want in it, representing however many images you want.
This is also easy but may use a lot of memory, because you can't access one image without loading all of them into memory at once. If you always load all of them anyway then it's no different. If you often load only one of them, this technique might use a lot more memory (e.g. 4 images would mean around 4x as much memory used).
Use a separate entity to hold the image and a to-many relationship
With this approach you'd create a new Core Data entity that only holds the image. Your existing entity would have a to-many relationship to this entity. You'd create as many image-only instances as you want, and the relationship would mean they were all available at any time.
You would probably want to make sure the to-many relationship is ordered, otherwise the images would be an unordered set that could be in any order.
This is a little more complex to write but it's flexible and doesn't have the potential memory problems of other approaches.