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Using Old-Style Property Lists

This document describes how to create old-style (non-XML) ASCII property lists and convert them back to property list representations in memory. “Using Old-Style Property Lists in Objective-C” describes how to use old-style property lists in Objective-C, and “Using Old-Style Property Lists in Java” describes how to use them in Java.

Contents:

Using Old-Style Property Lists in Objective-C
Using Old-Style Property Lists in Java

Using Old-Style Property Lists in Objective-C

The NSPropertyListSerialization class (available in Mac OS X v10.2 and later) provides methods for saving and restoring property lists from the three supported formats. To save a property list in the old-style OpenStep format, use the dataFromPropertyList:format:errorDescription: method with NSPropertyListOpenStepFormat as the second parameter. This code fragment saves the property list plist to an old-style ASCII plist file at path:

id plist;       // Assume this exists.

NSString *path; // Assume this is a valid path.

NSData *plistData;

NSString *error;

plistData = [NSPropertyListSerialization dataFromPropertyList:plist

                                        format:NSPropertyListOpenStepFormat

                                        errorDescription:&error];

if(plistData)

{

    NSLog(@"No error creating plist data.");

    [plistData writeToFile:path atomically:YES];

}

else

{

    NSLog(error);

    [error release];

}

To restore a property list from data, use the NSPropertyListSerialization method propertyListFromData:mutabilityOption:format:errorDescription:. This code fragment creates an immutable property list from the file at path:

NSString *path; // Assume this is a path to a valid plist.

NSData *plistData;

NSString *error;

NSPropertyListFormat format;

id plist;

plistData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:path];

plist = [NSPropertyListSerialization propertyListFromData:plistData

                                mutabilityOption:NSPropertyListImmutable

                                format:&format

                                errorDescription:&error];

if(!plist)

{

    NSLog(error);

    [error release];

}

Using Old-Style Property Lists in Java

The NSPropertyListSerialization class provides methods for saving and restoring property lists in the three property list formats. To create old-style ASCII property list representations from a property list, use the stringFromPropertyList static method. The following code fragment stores the property list plist as an old-style plist file at url:

Object plist;     // Assume this is a valid property list.

java.net.URL url; // Assume this is a well-formed local file URL.

String plistString;

NSData plistData;

plistString = NSPropertyListSerialization.stringFromPropertyList(plist);

plistData = new NSData(plistString.getBytes());

plistData.writeToURL(url, true);

To restore an old-style property list to a property list in memory, use the propertyListFromString static method. The following code fragment restores a property list from the old-style plist file located at url:

java.net.URL url; // Assume this is a URL to a well-formed old-style plist.

NSData plistData;

String plistString;

Object plist;

plistData = new NSData(url);

plistString = new String(plistData.bytes(0, plistData.length()));

plist = NSPropertyListSerialization.propertyListFromString(plistString);

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