Question

Here is my problem. I have a plist called myPlist and it looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">    
<plist version="1.0">    
<dict>    
<key>1</key>    
<array>    
<string>Dog</string>    
<string> empty </string>    
<true/>    
</array>    
<key>2</key>    
<array>    
<string>Car</string>    
<string> empty </string>    
<false/>    
</array>    
<key>3</key>    
<array>    
<string>Table</string>    
<string> empty </string>    
<true/>    
</array>
</dict>    

It has three values for each key. Two are strings and one is Boolean. I tried the ‘usual ways’ to fill an nsmutablearray with the plist so I could show it in a tableview but the NSMutableArray is always empty. I tried this first:

NSMutableArray *mutable = [[NSArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:
             [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"myPlist" ofType:@"plist"]] retain];

Then I also tried this but it still returns 0 objects.

 NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"myPlist" ofType:@"plist"];

        NSDictionary *dict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:path];

        NSArray *mutable = [NSArray arrayWithArray:[dict objectForKey:@"Root"]];

I always used dictionary-like plist and this is my first one with this kind of structure so I think I’m doing something wrong. Btw did I mention that I’m a noob? 🙂

Please help.

EDIT
Thanks to Rob, I can now read data using this line:

NSDictionary *dogObject = [dict objectForKey:@"1"];

But how can I transfer the data to a NSMutableArray so I could edit the data later? Or can I just save the edited data using dictionary?

Answer 1

You are missing the end-tag for the top level plist tag. I assume that is a copy/paste error.

If you add the missing </plist> at the end, that is a valid property list. It contains a top-level dictionary, so you have to load it into an NSDictionary, not an NSArray (or NSMutableArray).

The top-level dictionary doesn’t contain the key Root. It contains three keys: 1, 2, and 3. So you could get an object from it like this:

NSDictionary *dogObject = [dict objectForKey:@"1"];