Multi-dimensional plist

FrankNatoli · May 2nd, 2012, 08:07 AM

Chapter 8, Using the Table View, starts with a relatively simple plist. Although the book doesn't show the XML source of the plist, I believe the simple example is an array of "dict" objects.

But what about the more complex plist, page 213? First dimension is year, second dimension is movie titles. What would the XML source of this plist look like?

I'm guessing an outside array of "dict" objects, each object containing a single key/string pair for the year. Then inside each "dict" object is an "array" containing an inside array of "dict" objects, multiple in this case, all the movie titles.

Something like this:

Code:

<array>
  <dict>
    <key>year</key>
    <string>2000</string>
    <array>
      <dict>
        <key>title</key>
        <string>Malcolm X</sting>
      </dict>
      <dict>
        <key>title</key>
        <string>The Pelican Brief</string>
      </dict>
    </array>
  </dict>
  <dict>
    <key>year</key>
    <string>2001</string>

etc.

Is this correct?

thepianoguy · May 2nd, 2012, 12:10 PM

Based on the download, the Movies.plist is a dictionary of arrays.

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>2000</key>
	<array>
		<string>Malcolm X</string>
		<string>The Pelican Brief</string>
		<string>The Hurricane</string>
	</array>
	<key>2001</key>
	<array>
		<string>Remember the Titans</string>
		<string>The Bone Collector</string>
	</array>
	<key>2002</key>
	<array>
		<string>John Q.</string>
	</array>
	<key>2004</key>
	<array>
		<string>Man on Fire</string>
		<string>Out of Time</string>
		<string>Training Day</string>
		<string>License to Kill</string>
		<string>Carbon Copy</string>
	</array>
	<key>2006</key>
	<array>
		<string>A Hand to Guide Me</string>
		<string>Inside Man</string>
	</array>
	<key>2007</key>
	<array>
		<string>Deja Vu </string>
	</array>
	<key>2008</key>
	<array>
		<string>The Great Debaters</string>
		<string>American Gangster</string>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>

Since there is only one key (title in your example) a dictionary of dictionaries would not be needed.

To see a more complex .plist you might check out the PList project for Chapter 10 of the book at this link.
http://p2p.wrox.com/book-professiona...velopment-604/
Run the program, enter some contacts and then inspect the stored .plist
Bob

FrankNatoli · May 2nd, 2012, 01:19 PM

Great, exactly what I needed to know.

I'm actually implementing something a bit more complicated than the chapter demo, so I will have an inner array of dicts, but your plist shows that the outer dimension is effectively implemented by the list of [year] keys.

Thanks much.