Initial data for models

[jpmcosta]

Is there a way to populate the initial data:

• the first time a boxStore is created
• in a way that's blocking for queries and puts
• runs in the background

[greenrobot]

I would suggest solving this on the application side of things. For example:

• have a Callable doing the init of BoxStore and populating data, returns BoxStore
• Submit the Callable to a thread pool resulting in a Future
• Have a getBoxStore() getter returning future.get()

(Or something RXy)
Not sure if this is something that can/should be offered in a useful way by ObjectBox. Ideas?

[jpmcosta]

As I see things, it would make sense for ObjectBox to call some initializer (if set) to make sure the database is populated with all necessary data before the application starts interacting with it, when its file is first created.

I feel that relying on SharedPreferences to initialize data, or checking if the data is populated on every run is not ideal. The Future workflow makes sense, but it probably makes the interaction with the library more complicated than it needs to be, and it might be blocking even when there are no queries or puts (issues with dependency injection maybe).

It would be nice if the heavy-lifting was done by the library, behind the scenes. However, I don't know how difficult would it be to implement this. It also might come with some side-effects for cases when it's not used, but that comes with most features.

In my case, I would make use of such feature, but it's not vital. Even on cases where the sequence of events is not ideal there shouldn't be any major issues.

[greenrobot]

Makes sense, good point. Keeping this as a feature request for the future.

[jpmcosta]

Awesome, thanks! 😄

[greenrobot-team]

Way back in 2018 1.4.4 added BoxStoreBuilder.initialDbFile​(initialDbFile). Closing this then.

Feel free to re-open or create a new issue if your problem was not solved.