I have been developing an app with cloud/server data source. So naturally the process is one thing at a time. So at present, to fill my tables, I query the server which returns an array. The array contains urls to images and then from the urls I load the images using SDWebImage.

Now I am entering the stage of development where I need to implement Core Data for all the data in my tables (i.e. texts and images). So far I am considering the following approaches:

* I can load the array from the server into core data (imagine properties as: firstName, lastName, photoUrl, shortBio) and then pass the photo url from core data to SDWebImage to display the image in the table cells. OR
* I can load the array and the image into Core Data (i.e. load the array into core data in the background and then for each row, load the image into core data)

Of course the point here is that if I use SDWebImage it will save the image in its own caching system, which from my limited understanding may or may not be entirely consistent with what is in core data. On the other hand I don't understand core data enough to know if it handles saving images well in terms of performance (i.e. knows it's an image and therefore handle the file linking).

So What is the best way to do this? Can SDWebImage work in harmony with Core Data? Or is SDWebImage redundant since core data is good enough all by itself?

Another thing to note is that presently, my data loads from server immediately and then the images come as SDWebImage loads each into its UIImageView. This may not be a problem with Core Data since ideally the image will be in the local DB. Any thoughts?