Question

I am making an Iphone drinking card game app.
All the card mean something different and i want the user to be able to press an info button and then show a new screen with information about the current card. How can i make a document to load text from instead of using a bunch og long strings?

Thanks

Answer 1

You could look into plist files – they can be loaded quite easily into the various collection objects and edited with the plist editor in Xcode.

For instance, if you organize your data as a dictionary, the convenience constructor

+ (id)dictionaryWithContentsOfURL:(NSURL *)aURL

from NSDictionary would provide you with as many easily accessible strings as you need.

This method is useful if you consider your strings primarily data as opposed to UI elements.

Update:

As @Alex Nichol suggested, here is how you can do it in practice:

To create a plist file:

• In your Xcode project, for instance in the Supporting Files group, select New File > Resource > Property List
• You can save the file in en.lproj, to aid in localization
• In the Property list editing pane, select Add Row (or just hit return)
• Enter a key name (for instance user1) and a value (for instance “Joe”)

To read the contents:

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

NSLog(@"URL: %@", plistURL);

NSDictionary *strings = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfURL:plistURL];

NSString *user1 = [strings objectForKey:@"user1"];

NSLog(@"User 1: %@", user1);