Question

I am trying to make a simple password protected app using a text file to store the password that the user entered. I want to take whats in a text field store it in a file and ultimately compare whats in that file to what the user enters in another text field. here is what I have:

 //Setting the string to hold the password the user has entered
    NSString *createPassword1 = passwordSet.text;

    //creating a muttable array to store the value of createPassword1
    NSMutableArray *passwordArray = [NSMutableArray array];

    //storing createpassword1 into the first element of the array
    [passwordArray addObject:createPassword1];

    NSLog(@"%@",[passwordArray objectAtIndex:0]);//seeing if it is stored correctly (it is)


    //path for searching for the file
    NSString *path = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) objectAtIndex:0];
    //my filename
    NSString *fileName = @"PasswordFile.txt";

    NSString *fileAndPath = [path stringByAppendingPathComponent:fileName];

    if (![[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:fileAndPath]) {
        [[NSFileManager defaultManager] createFileAtPath:fileAndPath contents:nil attributes:nil];
    }

    [[[passwordArray objectAtIndex:0] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] writeToFile:fileAndPath atomically:YES];

Any help will be greatly appreciated thank you.

Answer 1

What you do is too complicated.
Why do you use a NSMutableArray (“passwordArray”) to store a single password?
Why do you convert it to NSData and write this to a file?
Just use a string and use its writeToFile method.
Alternatively use NSArray’s writeToFile method.

Alternatively, and my personal favorite: use NSUSerDefaults à la:

[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setValue: myPasswordString forKey:@"appPassword"]];

---

EDIT in response to some comments:
The above only applies if used in a “trivial” app that needs password-protection in a very low-level manner. Anything to protect really sensitive data should be handled differently.
The original poster explicitly stated

I want to take whats in a text field store it in a file and ultimately compare whats in that file to what the user enters in another text field.

So one can assume that high-level security is not an issue here.