:mod:`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), :class:`Data` or :class:`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 :class:`Data` class. This is a thin wrapper around a Python string. Use :class:`Data` if your strings contain control characters.

This module defines the following functions:

The following class is available:

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, :attr:`data`, that can be used to retrieve the Python string stored in it.

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"])