Plist: what it is and how to use it

Question

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 ca

Answer 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.