Custom object to NSMutableDictionary - ios

Question

I would like to add a custom object to NSDictionary. It should store three variables: two strings and a boolean.
I read around the net and found NSCoder to be the way but I dislike the result. By using [dictionary setObject:[NSKeyedArchiver archivedDataWithRootObject:customObject]] I end up with NSData information instead of human readable text. My target is to make it readable for human eyes. I do not want to encode the object into binary data.
To make it a little bit more complicated I would like to add my objects inside NSArray. For testing purposes I tried to add NSStrings to NSArray and to invoke [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:array forKey:#"myKey"]. The result is perfect. It is readable for human. I would like to add my custom object instead of the NSString.
Desired result should look something like this:
{
TextStrokeColor = "UIDeviceWhiteColorSpace 0.5 1";
TextStrokeWidth = 0;
MyObjects = (
MyCustomObject = {
name = "name";
boooool = 0;
description = "";
}
, ... other objects );
}
What should I use? I do not really get the difference and the use for NSCoder, NSCoding, NSCopying.
I need to be able to edit the text file later on the disk. By having binary representation I cannot. But seems there is no straightforward method.

Answer 1

You can simply use arrays, dictionaries, strings, numbers, dates (anything which can be written into a plist or JSON).
The question is wether this is done solely during 'archiving', or whether your in-memory representation is also arrays and dictionaries. You can also create a custom class which either uses a dictionary internally to store the data and archives / reloads from that dictionary, or the custom class is a standard class with properties and creates a dictionary on-the-fly when archiving or reloading.
Note that when using a keyed archiver, it can support setting the outputFormat to NSPropertyListXMLFormat_v1_0 for some use cases, so once your custom class implements archiving to plist data types you can easily archive the container to a plist (JSON will require more leg work from you to collate the data into true containers).

Answer 2

Have you tried actually creating a custom object by just making a class?
#interface MyCustomClass : NSObject
#property (nonatomic, strong) NSString *name;
#property (nonatomic, strong) BOOL boolValue;
#property (nonatomic, strong) NSString *description;
#end
#implementation MyCustomClass
// put any implementation methods here
#end
Then you can add it to an NSArray or an NSDictionary as you would with any other class.
MyCustomClass *myObject = [MyCustomClass new];
myObject.name = #"name";
myObject.boolValue = YES;
myObject.description #"a description";
[myMutableArray addObject:myObject];
myMutableDictionary[#"some key"] = myObject;