CKQuery with NSPredicate fails when using "CONTAINS" operator

Question

According to Apples Class Reference CKQuery, the operator CONTAINS is one of the supported operators. However, that doesn't seem to work. I have a RecordType called myRecord, and a record with field name name type String. I try to fetch the record with two different predicates, one with "==" operator, and one with CONTAINS operator.

func getRecords() {
    let name = "John"
    let Predicate1 = NSPredicate(format: "name == %@",name)
    let Predicate2 = NSPredicate(format: "name CONTAINS %@",name)

    let sort = NSSortDescriptor(key: "Date", ascending: false)
    let query = CKQuery(recordType: "myRecord", predicate: Predicate1)
    // let query = CKQuery(recordType: "myRecord", predicate: Predicate2)
    query.sortDescriptors = [sort]

    let operation = CKQueryOperation(query: query)
    operation.desiredKeys = ["name", "Date"]

    operation.recordFetchedBlock = { (record) in
        print(record["name"])

        operation.queryCompletionBlock = { [unowned self] (cursor, error) in
            dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
                if error == nil {

                    print ("sucess")
                } else {
                    print("couldn't fetch record error:\(error?.localizedDescription)")

                }
            }

        }

        CKContainer.defaultContainer().publicCloudDatabase.addOperation(operation)
    }

Using Predicate1, output is:

Optional(John)
sucess

Using Predicate2, output is:

couldn't fetch record error:Optional("Field \'name\' has a value type of STRING and cannot be queried using filter type LIST_CONTAINS")

Also using [c] to ignore casings gives a server issue.

How do I use the operator CONTAINS correctly?

EDIT: I have now looked closer at the documentation, and seen that CONTAINS can only be used with SELF. Meaning that all String fields will be used for searching. Isn't there a better way?

Answer 1

It's an exception mentioned as below:

With one exception, the CONTAINS operator can be used only to test list membership. The exception is when you use it to perform full-text searches in conjunction with the self key path. The self key path causes the server to look in searchable string-based fields for the specified token string. For example, a predicate string of @"self contains 'blue'" searches for the word “blue” in all fields marked for inclusion in full-text searches. You cannot use the self key path to search in fields whose type is not a string.

So, you can use 'self' instead of '%K' in order to search sub-text of string field.

For the full document written by Apple