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# 13.5. `plistlib` — Generate and parse Mac OS X `.plist` files

This module provides an interface for reading and writing the “property list” XML files used mainly by Mac OS X.

The property list (`.plist`) file format is a simple XML pickle supporting basic object types, like dictionaries, lists, numbers and strings. Usually the top level object is a dictionary.

Values can be strings, integers, floats, booleans, tuples, lists, dictionaries (but only with string keys), `Data` or `datetime.datetime` objects. String values (including dictionary keys) may be unicode strings – they will be written out as UTF-8.

The `<data>` plist type is supported through the `Data` class. This is a thin wrapper around a Python string. Use `Data` if your strings contain control characters.

See also

PList manual page <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/plist.5.html>
  Apple’s documentation of the file format.

This module defines the following functions:

`plistlib.``readPlist`(pathOrFile)

  Read a plist file. pathOrFile may either be a file name or a (readable) file object. Return the unpacked root object (which usually is a dictionary).

  The XML data is parsed using the Expat parser from `xml.parsers.expat` – see its documentation for possible exceptions on ill-formed XML. Unknown elements will simply be ignored by the plist parser.

`plistlib.``writePlist`(rootObject, pathOrFile)

  Write rootObject to a plist file. pathOrFile may either be a file name or a (writable) file object.

  A `TypeError` will be raised if the object is of an unsupported type or a container that contains objects of unsupported types.

`plistlib.``readPlistFromString`(data)
  Read a plist from a string. Return the root object.

`plistlib.``writePlistToString`(rootObject)
  Return rootObject as a plist-formatted string.

The following class is available:

class `plistlib.``Data`(data)

  Return a “data” wrapper object around the string data. This is used in functions converting from/to plists to represent the `<data>` type available in plists.

  It has one attribute, `data`, that can be used to retrieve the Python string stored in it.

## 13.5.1. Examples

Generating a plist:

    pl = dict(
        aString="Doodah",
        aList=["A", "B", 12, 32.1, [1, 2, 3]],
        aFloat = 0.1,
        anInt = 728,
        aDict=dict(
            anotherString="<hello & hi there!>",
            aUnicodeValue=u'M\xe4ssig, Ma\xdf',
            aTrueValue=True,
            aFalseValue=False,
        ),
        someData = Data("<binary gunk>"),
        someMoreData = Data("<lots of binary gunk>" * 10),
        aDate = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(time.mktime(time.gmtime())),
    )
    # unicode keys are possible, but a little awkward to use:
    pl[u'\xc5benraa'] = "That was a unicode key."
    writePlist(pl, fileName)

Parsing a plist:

    pl = readPlist(pathOrFile)
    print(pl["aKey"])

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