Saving and Reloading from .plist files…

A great way to store dictionary data that does not change during runtime is in a .plist file. Say you want to organize some data hierarchically or you want to store the navigation structure of a drill-down somewhere more convenient (see drill-down save example in apple docs), then a .plist file is a great way to go.

Here’s a quick example of how to restore data from a plist file. I’ll use a plist file that you can find in every app out there: Info.plist

Sometimes it’s useful to display a version number on a splash view and here’s how you can do that using the Info.plist CFBundleVersion value.


NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] bundlePath];
NSString *finalPath = [path stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Info.plist"];
NSDictionary *plistData = [[NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:finalPath] retain];

versionLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100,100,60,25)]; // for example
versionLabel.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
versionLabel.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
versionLabel.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:10];
NSString *versionString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"v%@", [plistData objectForKey:@"CFBundleVersion"]];
versionLabel.text = versionString;
[self.view addSubview:versionLabel];


Now you can see pretty easily how the plist file becomes an NSDictionary object. Pretty easy no?