Parse an iOS plist on Android

May 15, 2012 @ 11:16 pm · Filed under Programming

I was implementing a feature in the CalorieCount Android App the other day that was previously implemented in the iOS version of that same app. Just needed to show a list of timezones based on what country was selected. Not rocket science at all, but the iOS implementation was storing the data in a plist file, with a <dict> element inside. So rather than take that data and try to translate it to something more ‘android specific’ … I decided to just use the file as is. The biggest benefit was that in the future if we ever had to update the file, I could update it in place, and simply copy it over to the other platform.

So I copied the file into my xml folder, and wrote this simple parser that reads the file in, and parses it into a HashMap

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package cyborg;
 
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.HashMap;
 
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParser;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserException;
 
import android.content.Context;
 
/**
 * This class parses an iOS plist with a dict element into a hashmap.
 */
public class XmlMapParser {
	private XmlPullParser parser;
 
	public XmlMapVisitor(Context context, int xmlid) {
		parser = context.getResources().getXml(xmlid);
	}
 
	public HashMap<String, ArrayList<String>> convert() {
		HashMap<String, ArrayList<String>> map = new HashMap<String, ArrayList<String>>();
 
		final String KEY = "key", STRING = "string";
		
		try {
			parser.next();
			int eventType = parser.getEventType();
			String lastTag = null;
			String lastKey = null;
			
			while (eventType != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT) {
				
				if (eventType == XmlPullParser.START_TAG) {
					lastTag = parser.getName();
				} 
				else if (eventType == XmlPullParser.TEXT) {
					// some text
					if (KEY.equalsIgnoreCase(lastTag)) {
						// start tracking a new key
						lastKey = parser.getText();
					}
					else if (STRING.equalsIgnoreCase(lastTag)) {
						// a new string for the last encountered key
						if (!map.containsKey(lastKey)) {
							map.put(lastKey, new ArrayList<String>());
						}
						
						map.get(lastKey).add(parser.getText());
					}
				}
				
				eventType = parser.next();
			}
		} catch (XmlPullParserException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		} catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
 
		return map;
	}
}
view raw XmlMapParser.java This Gist brought to you by GitHub.
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>key1</key>
	<array>
		<string>one</string>
		<string>two</string>
	</array>
	
	<key>key2</key>
	<array>
		<string>one</string>
		<string>two</string>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>
view raw sample.plist This Gist brought to you by GitHub.

The way I look at it, may as well reuse what we’ve got, and spend less time yak shaving (ie. translating between platforms) … git ‘er done!

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