RestKit and Core Data - How to POST data?

Question

I am using RestKit .22.0 with Core Data integration, both of which I'm pretty unfamiliar with. I followed the RKGist tutorial and was able to learn how to get objects from a REST endpoint, set up object mappings, add routes, and see the data from the web service correctly insert into the Core Data sqlite database.

Now I'm starting to work on persisting objects to the web service, but can't find any information on how best to do this. It seems like there are multiple ways to skin a cat with RestKit, so I wanted to see what the best practices are for POST/PUTing data.

1. When POSTing a new object, do you usually save the object in the managed object context first, then call [[RKObjectManager sharedManager] postObject:path:parameters:success:failure:]? Or is there some RestKit method that performs both of these operations at once?
2. If you first save the object in Core Data then POST it to the web service, is RestKit going to be able to update the already inserted object with the service's database identification attributes? Does the [[RKObjectManager sharedManager] postObject:path:parameters:success:failure:] method do this for you?
3. If there was an error POSTing the object, what is the typical way you'd retry the POST? Would you look for some sort of flag in the core data managed object and retry in a separate thread?

Thanks!

Answer 1

1. Yes, then the response from the POST updates that same object (perhaps filling in the server specified unique id)
2. Yes, updating the POSTed object is the default behaviour (you need to specify the response mapping and the response must be a single object)
3. No separate thread generally, and it depends what caused the error. Have a flag that indicates it's uploaded and retry when network connection is reestablished