Question

Normally for REST APIs I’d use JSON as the output serialization format, but I’m wondering if that’s still a great choice for iOS development (specifically, the iPad) given the more resource-constrained environment.

There are various JSON and XML libraries available for iOS, but are there some best practices for this, or reasons to go one way or the other?

Or would it be better to use XML in plist format, given that plist encoding/decoding looks like it’s built into iOS?

Answer 1

It seems that only the binary plist format will give any performance advantages, and there are many disadvantages to using a binary format. Even then, the JSONKit library is several times faster than Apple’s built-in binary plist parser. Here’s the article that answered all my questions:

JSON versus PLIST, the Ultimate Showdown

So I think I’ll stick with JSON and probably go for JSONKit.