Question

What’s the best way to store error messages (specially while developing with Xcode and Objective-C for Mac and iPhone):

1. Creating a separate class that
   contains list of error code and
   corresponding messages
2. .plist of
   error code and corresponding
   messages
3. Localizable.string file
   with error code and corresponding
   messages (the application may or may
   not support localization)
4. Other(s)

I’m sure i don’t have to give a reason why anyone would want to keep all the error messages in one location. Thanks.

Answer 1

Your file doesn’t have to be called Localizable.strings. You can have a file called Errors.strings. When you want to get the error description, you can use:

NSString *errCode = @"err1";
NSString *errDesc = [[NSBundle mainBundle] localizedStringForKey:errCode
                                                           value:nil
                                                           table:@"Errors"];

You could use a plist file, however all the work is done for you with a strings file, you don’t have to write any code to parse any file or initialise some dictionary or array (no matter how easy that is anyway).