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Whats the best alternative for a Plist that works across platforms?
I have an app im working on that is highly customisable by the end user, all the customisations are saved into a plist file and stored on a web server. this plist file contains many dictionaries, arrays and strings. everything from app colors, fonts, screens, menus, etc etc.
I will be creating an android version of this app, and possibly windows and other platforms. I need the data file on the server to be read by the other apps, android, windows etc, as well as they must be able to write to the file and upload to the server.
Ive used a plist file becuase its what im familiar with, and its so easy to work with. now before i get too deep into this iphone app, and before android work starts happening, I would like to finalise the file type.
Can android/windows etc read/write to plist or is it an apple only file type? if it can stay as plist I would be quite happy haha.
My thought was to convert the plist to json and save it as a string in a file. and reverse, download the json string file fron the server, convert the json string to an array (the root type of my plist file). Is this OK or is there any better ways?
Property lists are a part of Apple's Core Foundation (CF) classes.
Core Foundation is public domain, and there are implementations available for most languages and platforms. I imagine there is a version for Android.
Binary property lists are much more compact, much faster to process, and require much less memory than either JSON or XML. If you can get a working CF framework for Java, it would be a better choice.
XML and JSON are both pretty widely supported and easy to use, but that doesn't mean they are always the best choice. JSON is a little more efficient than XML, but only a little. Binary plists are several times faster than JSON to process, and require an order of magnitude less memory. (A guy in our local developer's group did an in-depth comparison of different data exchange formats, with concrete measurements. I don't have the details at my fingertips, but what I'm saying is based on his research.)
Regards,
Duncan C WareTo
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Ok thanks, Ill just stick with PList then. A quick good search shows a bunch of different android plist parsers. I assume whatever route I take with android I will need a parser, yet on iOS i can just read plists natively so i may as well stay with plist, especially if you say it is better performing too.
thephotographer
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0 • Off Topic Insightful Disagree Dislike Like AwesomeCore Foundation is public domain, and there are implementations available for most languages and platforms. I imagine there is a version for Android.
Binary property lists are much more compact, much faster to process, and require much less memory than either JSON or XML. If you can get a working CF framework for Java, it would be a better choice.
XML and JSON are both pretty widely supported and easy to use, but that doesn't mean they are always the best choice. JSON is a little more efficient than XML, but only a little. Binary plists are several times faster than JSON to process, and require an order of magnitude less memory. (A guy in our local developer's group did an in-depth comparison of different data exchange formats, with concrete measurements. I don't have the details at my fingertips, but what I'm saying is based on his research.)
Duncan C
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0 • Off Topic Insightful Disagree Dislike Like AwesomeThanks!
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