USe NSCoding To Create User Editable Plist

I开发者_如何学编程'm trying to create a user editable plist where the user can store a custom created workout routine including strings referenced from another data.plist in the app bundle.

I'm assuming NSCoding is the best way to go about this. So far I have the interface setup as a nav bar and table view.

I want it to be blank be default and the user has to press the "+" that is in the top right of the nav bar. Then he could enter a name for an entry in an array, for example chest day, or bicep day. And within that array, will be a dictionary or another array of strings of the particular exercises for that day, for example bench press, or bicep curl.

This plist needs to be editable so it will be going in the users document folder and not in the app bundle.

Example:

Top array consists of Chest Day, Back Day, Leg Day. Within Chest Day dictionary, include bench press, chest pull, pushup, etc.

Update:

Adding this method to search for routine file;

    -(void)loadData
{
    if(YES)
    {
        NSString* documentsPath = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) objectAtIndex:0];
        NSString* routineFile = [documentsPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"routine.plist"];
        BOOL fileExists = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:routineFile];
    }
    else
    {
        //load file
    }
}

NSCoding is the protocol used by NSArchiver, NSKeyedArchiver, etc., not for serializing an array into a property list.

Forget about the idea that the user is going to edit a property list. The user is going to edit data in your app -- the fact that it's stored as a property list is just an implementation detail. When your app starts, you read the data stored in the data file. The user edits it, looks at it, whatever. At some point later, perhaps after each edit, perhaps just before the app quits, you write the data back out to the file. Since it's a property list, don't worry about updating the file; you already have all the data, so write a whole new property list and then use that file to replace the old one.

Perhaps I'm wrong and you really do intend for the user to edit the property list by hand, with a text editor. This would be a mistake. It's great the property lists are human readable, but asking your users to edit your raw data files by hand is a strong indication that your app is broken. The whole purpose of your app is to keep track of this information for the user; if they wanted to use a text editor to manage it, they wouldn't need your app. So, with that said, I hope I'm not wrong. ;-)

I don't think I'd use NSCoding for this - if all you're working with is standard plist objects like NSArray, NSDictionary, and NSString, the top array's -writeToFile:atomically: method is an easy way to do the job.