Should I use NSUserDefaults or a plist to store data?

Question

I will be storing a few strings (maybe 10-20). I am not sure if I should use NSUserDefaults to save them, or write them out to a plist. What is considered best practice? NSU

Answer 1

If you are storing 10-20 strings and are looking for not too many lines of code, core data is certainly much too much overhead. I recommend going with the plist. Not a lot of code:

NSURL *plistURL = [[NSBundle mainBundle] URLForResource:@"MyStrings" withExtension:@"plist"];
NSArray *stringArray = [NSArray arrayWithContentsOfURL:plistURL];

Answer 2

Using .plist

1. Create a plist using Xcode

Write a value to plist

NSURL *plistURL = [[NSBundle mainBundle] URLForResource:@"settings" withExtension:@"plist"];

 NSMutableDictionary *dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfURL:plistURL];
 [dict setValue:@"value" forKey:@"key"];
 [dict writeToURL:plistURL atomically:YES];

Read a value from plist

NSMutableDictionary *dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfURL:plistURL];
NSString *myValue = [dict valueForKey:@"key"];

Answer 3

The recommended way to persist data like this is to use Core Data. While NSUserDefaults can be used to store more or less anything it's only supposed to be used to store preferences.