exclude a property in NSFetchRequest - objective-c

Question

I need to fetch an entity with all properties expect one property. I know that there is way to include name of all properties to do such a thing:
NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init];
[request setResultType:NSDictionaryResultType];
[request setPropertiesToFetch:
[NSArray arrayWithObjects:#"property1", #"property2", /* etc. */ nil]];
NSEntityDescription *e = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:entityName
inManagedObjectContext:self.context];
But I don't want to mention all of properties because of one property!
Do you know any good performance solution for this?

Answer 1

Unfortunately you're going to have to name all properties except the one. There is no other way. Here is a way to do it automatically and don't worry about performance.
NSEntityDescription *entityDescription = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:entityName inManagedObjectContext:self.context];
NSArray *allProperties = entityDescription.properties;
NSMutableArray *propertiesToFetch = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:allProperties.count];
for (NSPropertyDescription *property in allProperties) {
if (![property.name isEqualToString:#"xxx"]) {
[propertiesToFetch addObject:property];
}
}
NSFetchRequest *request = [NSFetchRequest fetchRequestWithEntityName:entityName];
request.resultType = NSDictionaryResultType;
request.propertiesToFetch = propertiesToFetch;

Answer 2

You can use this approach to remove a particular property from an array of all the properties. Let's assume your Entity is called PatientRecord.
NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init];
[request setResultType:NSDictionaryResultType];
PatientRecord *patient;
NSMutableArray *allProperties = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithArray:patient.entity.properties];
[allProperties removeObject:#"propertyToRemove"];
[request setPropertiesToFetch:allProperties];
NSEntityDescription *e = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:entityName
inManagedObjectContext:self.context];