Plist dicionaries keys - ios

Question

I am using this code to add content into a plist :
//////////// Save data into plist /////////////////
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *path = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"datatesting.plist"];
NSLog(#"path='%#'",path);
NSFileManager *nfm = [[NSFileManager alloc] init];
if([nfm fileExistsAtPath:path])
{
// if file exists, get its contents, add more entries and write back
NSMutableArray *array = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:path];
NSArray *keys = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:#"Title",#"Description",#"Coordinate",nil];
[array addObject:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjects:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",titlestring],[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",descriptionstring],[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",coordinadastring], nil] forKeys:keys]];
NSLog(#"modified array=%#",array);
BOOL ok = [array writeToFile:path atomically:YES];
if(!ok){
NSLog(#"Unable to write appended file");
return;
}
} else {
// if file doesn't exist, create a new one
NSMutableArray *array = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
NSArray *keys = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:#"Title",#"Description",#"Coordinate",nil];
[array addObject:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjects:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",titlestring],[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",descriptionstring],[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",coordinadastring], nil] forKeys:keys]];
NSLog(#"new array=%#",array);
BOOL ok = [array writeToFile:path atomically:YES];
if(!ok){
NSLog(#"Unable to write new file");
return;
}
}
Now I am having issues in using the content of the plist. So my two questions are :
- What is the Keys of the dictionaries of the current plist ?
- What is the way to read the content in a Tableview ?

Answer 1

You have an array of dictionaries. You need to iterate on the contents of the array, then look at each dictionary. You can do this with block enumerators or the older for() style. I'll use the latter now as you may not know blocks.
NSArray *array = ...; // read in the array from the file
for(NSDictionary *dict in array) {
NSString *title = [dict objectForKey:#"Title"];
... etc
}
When you want to show this data in a tablview, the number of rows is the number of dictionaries (ie [array count]). If you wanted to show just the title for each cell, you would get the cell row number, then get the dictionary by [array objectAtIndex:cellRow]), then pull out the title as above.