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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-18T05:17:37+00:00

So I have 0.5MB XML file with data for my iPhone application. It’s all

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So I have 0.5MB XML file with data for my iPhone application. It’s all read-only so I don’t have to bother with writing.

Currently I’m using NSXMLParser to load data.

I had fun with NSXMLParser and I created a class that loads only the part of data that I currently need. So once the file is parsed it takes minimum of memory.

But it’s very slow. It takes 500-1000ms to parse the XML file and find the part of data that I need on my iPad.

I could load all the data at once and than just use it. That would definitely save me from all the XML loading and parsing, but then I would have 500kB NSArray or something. I don’t particularly like that idea.

I was wondering if there’s any way to do this that wouldn’t take much memory and would be fast too.

Any ideas please?

Updates:

Thanks everyone for answers. So it looks like these two options are the best for this case:

  1. Archiving XML data into binary form. It will be processed very quickly, and 500kB is really not that much to stay in the memory.
  2. If I really wanted to make it super-memory-efficient, than there’s SQLite or Core Data.

I think I’m gonna try and implement number one.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    500 KB really is not that much. To put it in perspective, loading a full screen image as a background on your iPad uses 2.9 MB.

    So, personally I would just load all data in memory and operate it directly.

    I would also convert from XML to an archived NSArray or NSDictionary. That should make the initial loading very very fast.

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