Saving UIImage Into Core Data Always Returns Nil when using ImagePickerView - Swift 3 - swift

Question

I've been trying to save a single picture to an entity containing a single property titled "prof" and configured as a Binary Data type.
I go through the hoops to select a picture from UIImagePickerViewController, then I call up my method that handles saving the picture in Core Data in the desired NSData format.
My issue stems from loading the picture, in my loadImage method the entity for the image is not nil, meaning it does exist. However, I get nil when I try to parse the fetched NSData to a UIImage format to recreate the picture and then be able to use it.
Now i am using Swift 3 and Xcode 8, so far all the troubleshooting questions on here have the solution of casting the NSData to UImage like so:
let image : UIImage = UIImage(data: imageData)
however, xcode gives me a compiler error when I do this, and instead forces me to cast it as:
let image : UIImage = UIImage(data: (imageData as Data?)!)
which is where i get the nil that's throwing up my flow in the air... i've tried saving the data in many different ways, but still nothing.
if anyone could go through my following methods, see if i might be doing something wrong in the saving part, or the formating of NSData on the fetch method... anything would help.
My configuration:
-the prof property has "Allow external storage" set to true
-my persistent store is seeded blank at the app installation, meaning all the needed properties are already set up when the app is launched for the first time, but obviously set to nil until changed or modified by my various data flows.
-There is no other picture entity in my data model, this is the only one.
func saveProfilePicture(_ pic: UIImage){
let picData = UIImagePNGRepresentation(pic)
let request: NSFetchRequest<UsePics> = UsePics.fetchRequest()
do {
let records = try coreDataManager.managedObjectContext.fetch(request) as [UsePics]
let first = (records.first)
first?.setValue(picData, forKey: "prof")
try context.save()
} catch let err {
print(err)
}
}
func getProfilePicture() -> UIImage? {
let request: NSFetchRequest<UsePics> = UsePics.fetchRequest()
var image : UIImage?
do {
let records = try coreDataManager.managedObjectContext.fetch(request) as [UsePics]
let first = (records.first?.prof) as NSData
if let parsedImage : UIImage = UIImage(data: (first as Data?)!) as? UIImage {
image = parsedImage
}
} catch let err {
print(err)
}
return image
}
EDIT
The solution was found by noticing that in Swift 3, the UIImage class adheres to the Transformable protocol. Swapping my property type for the image from Binary Data to Transformable actually made it possible to save the UIImage as UIImage directly into Core Data without parsing it to another data type.
func saveProfilePicture(_ image: UIImage){
let request: NSFetchRequest<UsePics> = UsePics.fetchRequest()
do {
let records = try coreDataManager.managedObjectContext.fetch(request) as [UsePics]
let first = (records.first)
first?.prof = image
print(first)
coreDataManager.saveData()
} catch let err {
print(err)
}
}
func loadProfilePicture() -> UIImage? {
var image : UIImage?
let request: NSFetchRequest<UsePics> = UsePics.fetchRequest()
do {
let records = try coreDataManager.managedObjectContext.fetch(request) as [UsePics]
let first = records.first
if let img = first?.prof {
image = img as? UIImage
} else {
print("no image")
}
} catch let err {
print(err)
}
return image
}