Question

I’m looking at using a plist to hold some data for my iPhone Application, as the data is small and does not require any filtering / sorting etc the plist seems like the easiest option for me.

Currently I am downloading the plist from the web server each time the app is launched however I would like to only download the plist if it is newer than the locally stored plist file.

Current I thinking of doing the following but was wondering if there is a better way to do this.

App Launch
Is Internet Available
    remote_Version = Download MY_SERVER_URL\Version.txt
    If local_version < remote_version
        file = Download MY_SERVER_URL\data.plist
        write plist to disk
    end if
end if

Thanks Aaron

Answer 1

If you have the ability to change the serving of the file from the web server, I’d recommend you take a look at the HTTP status codes. Specifically, your web server would ideally return a 304 Not Modified if the file has not been updated. This removes the need to first check a version file. To do this correctly, you could pass the version of the last file downloaded and saved with the request.