Creating a plist using Java

Question

Is there an easy way to create a plist with Java? The result should be the same as serializing a dictionary in Objective C.

Answer 1

The PList class from code.google.com/xmlwise looks more promising to me.

Answer 2

You don't need any external Java libraries. Use the following steps:

1. Create an empty, stand-alone DOM document.

   DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
   DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
   DOMImplementation di = builder.getDOMImplementation();
   DocumentType dt = di.createDocumentType("plist",
     "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN",
     "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd");
   Document doc = di.createDocument("", "plist", dt);
   doc.setXmlStandalone(true);
   

2. Set plist version.

   Element root = doc.getDocumentElement();
   root.setAttribute("version", "1.0");
   

3. Enter data.

   Element rootDict = doc.createElement("dict");
   root.appendChild(rootDict);
   Element sampleKey = doc.createElement("key");
   sampleKey.setTextContent("foo");
   rootDict.appendChild(sampleKey);
   Element sampleValue = doc.createElement("string");
   sampleValue.setTextContent("bar");
   rootDict.appendChild(sampleValue);
   

4. Create a transformer.

   DOMSource domSource = new DOMSource(doc);
   TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
   Transformer t = tf.newTransformer();
   t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "UTF-16");
   t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.DOCTYPE_PUBLIC, dt.getPublicId());
   t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.DOCTYPE_SYSTEM, dt.getSystemId());
   t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
   t.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
   

5. Write to file.

   StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
   StreamResult streamResult = new StreamResult(stringWriter);
   t.transform(domSource, streamResult);
   String xml = stringWriter.toString();
   System.out.println(xml); // Optionally output to standard output.
   OutputStream stream = new FileOutputStream("example.plist");
   Writer writer = new OutputStreamWriter(stream, "UTF-16");
   writer.write(xml);
   writer.close();
   

You can then read such a file in Objective-C as described by the Property List Programming Guide.