Converting property lists into Objective-C literals - objective-c

Question

I'm not sure if this is possible, but I've seen people do crazy things with regex and other tools.
I want to convert this plist to an Objective-C literals:
<dict>
<key>ar</key>
<array>
<string>+54## #### ####</string>
<string>## #### ####</string>
</array>
<key>at</key>
<array>
<string>+43 1 ########</string>
<string>+43 ############</string>
</dict>
converted to:
NSDictionary *dic = #{
#"ar" : #[#"+54## #### ####", #"## #### ####"],
#"at" : #[#"+43 1 ########",#"+43 ############"]
};
Is it possible to automate such conversion? This guy did something similiar: he parsed a PHP list into an NSDictionary using VIM.

Answer 1

Plist don't have a separate 'format' for use in code (this question doesn't quite make sense as-is). You either want to 1. generate Objective-C code which initializes the dictionary with these values, or 2. initialize the dictionary using the file, for which you can write
NSDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:#"UIPhoneFormats.plist"];
Edit: so you want to generate Objective-C code that in turn will reproduce the same dictionary. For this, you need to re-print the contents of the dictionary in a formatted way. You can write a program like this:
#import <stdio.h>
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
NSString *recursiveDump(id object)
{
if ([object isKindOfClass:[NSString class]]) {
return [NSString stringWithFormat:#"#\"%#\"", object];
} else if ([object isKindOfClass:[NSNumber class]]) {
return [NSString stringWithFormat:#"#%#", object];
} else if ([object isKindOfClass:[NSArray class]]) {
NSMutableString *str = [NSMutableString stringWithString:#"#["];
NSInteger size = [object count];
NSInteger i;
for (i = 0; i < size; i++) {
if (i > 0) [str appendString:#", "];
[str appendString:recursiveDump([object objectAtIndex:i])];
}
[str appendString:#"]"];
return str;
} else if ([object isKindOfClass:[NSDictionary class]]) {
NSMutableString *str = [NSMutableString stringWithString:#"#{"];
NSString *key;
NSInteger size = [object count];
NSArray *keys = [object allKeys];
NSInteger i;
for (i = 0; i < size; i++) {
if (i > 0) [str appendString:#", "];
key = [keys objectAtIndex:i];
[str appendFormat:#"%#: %#", recursiveDump(key), recursiveDump([object objectForKey:key])];
}
[str appendString:#"}"];
return str;
} else {
// feel free to implement handling NSData and NSDate here,
// it's not that straighforward as it is for basic data types.
}
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
NSDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:#"UIPhoneFormats.plist"];
NSMutableString *code = [NSMutableString stringWithString:#"NSDictionary *dict = "];
[code appendString:recursiveDump(dict)];
[code appendString:#";"];
printf("%s\n", [code UTF8String]);
[pool release];
return 0;
}
This program will generate (hopefully syntax error-free) Objective-C initialization code out of the provided property list which can be copy-pasted to a project and be used.
Edit: I just run the program on a stripped version of the plist file OP has provided (the original file was way too large, so I cut it a bit) and it generated the following code:
NSDictionary *dict = #{#"at": #[#"+43 1 ########", #"+43 ############", #"01 ########", #"00 $"], #"ar": #[#"+54## #### ####", #"## #### ####", #"00 $", #"18 ### $ "]};
To verify it was really valid, I pasted this into the middle of an int main() to a file called 'test.m', so I got this program:
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
int main()
{
NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
NSDictionary *dict = #{#"at": #[#"+43 1 ########", #"+43 ############", #"0$
NSLog(#"%#", dict);
[pool release];
return 0;
}
To verify, I run clang -o test test.m -lobjc -framework Foundation and surprise, surprise:
It worked.
Edit 2: I made this a command line utility, just to facilitate further work - who knows, this may be useful in the future. Plist2ObjC
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

What you need is Serializing a Property List
NSData* plistData = [source dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSString *error;
NSPropertyListFormat format;
NSDictionary* plist = [NSPropertyListSerialization propertyListFromData:plistData mutabilityOption:NSPropertyListImmutable format:&format errorDescription:&error];
NSLog( #"plist is %#", plist );
if(!plist){
NSLog(#"Error: %#",error);
[error release];
}
If you want to get it as a string, use this,
NSString *aString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#", plist];
or else you can call NSString *aString = [plist description] to get the same as a string.
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