Is there something equivalent to plist files in Android like we have in iOS?

Question

When programming iOS apps we can have data in a plist file then read it in/out in a matter of one-two lines with NSDictionary. Does something like this exists on Android? I have already made an app on iOS with a plist file containing a couple of hundred entries. That is just normal XML isn't it? So I can parse the file with SAX/DOM Java parser?

Answer 1

Plist files exist in one of three forms:

• NeXTSTEP format (which looks a lot like JSON). This is deprecated.
• XML format (which you can parse on any platform very easily)
• Binary format (which is not documented by Apple but saves space compared to the XML format)

If the plist file you want to parse is in NeXTSTEP or XML format, it is easy to build a parser for it using existing tools on most platforms. In the case of the XML format, yes you can use Java's inbuilt parser.

If the plist file is binary, however, you will have to either roll your own parser or use an existing third-party class. One exists at http://www.java2s.com/Open-Source/Java-Document/Swing-Library/jide-oss-2.8.3/com/jidesoft/plaf/aqua/BinaryPListParser.java.htm, but I haven't used it myself so I can't vouch for its accuracy/quality/performance.