Plist: what it is and how to use it

问题

What exactly is a .plist file and how would I use it? When I view this in xcode, it seems to generate some kind of template vs showing me some xml code. Is there a way that I can extract the data in a plist file by pushing the contents into an array? Also, where can I view the source of the .plist?

回答1:

You can easily get the contents of a plist into an array by using the following code (we're opening here the file called 'file.plist' that's part of the Xcode project):

NSString *filePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"file" ofType:@"plist"];
contentArray = [NSArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:filePath];

A plist is just a XML file which corresponds to some DTD (datatype dictionary) designed by Apple, the DTD can be seen here:

http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd

The DTD -among other things- describes the "objects" and datatypes that the XML file can contain.

回答2:

Plist is short for property list. It is just a filetype used by Apple to store data.

You can get more info here:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/plist.5.html

If you want to read in plists check here:

// Get the location of the plist
// NSBundle represents the main application bundle (.app) so this is a shortcut
// to avoid hardcoding paths
// "Data" is the name of the plist
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Data" ofType:@"plist"];

// NSData is just a buffer with the binary data
NSData *plistData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:path];

// Error object that will be populated if there was a parsing error
NSString *error;

// Property list format (see below)
NSPropertyListFormat format;

id plist;

plist = [NSPropertyListSerialization propertyListFromData:plistData
                                mutabilityOption:NSPropertyListImmutable
                                format:&format
                                errorDescription:&error];

plist could be whatever the top level container in the plist was. For example, if the plist was a dictionary then plist would be an NSDictionary. If the plist was an array it would be an NSArray

Here the format enum:

enum {
   NSPropertyListOpenStepFormat = kCFPropertyListOpenStepFormat,
   NSPropertyListXMLFormat_v1_0 = kCFPropertyListXMLFormat_v1_0,
   NSPropertyListBinaryFormat_v1_0 = kCFPropertyListBinaryFormat_v1_0
}; NSPropertyListFormat;

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/PropertyLists/SerializePlist/SerializePlist.html.html

回答3:

.plist or The Property List

.plist is short for Property List and it's file that's automatically created with every Xcode project. This file stores configuration information for the application at runtime (when the app is running). The information is stored in a format called a key-value pair. Its similar to a dictionary, the key is the property name and the value is the configuration.

Here's What the Apply says about it.

来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5654470/plist-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it

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