plistlib — Generate and parse Apple.plist files¶

Source code:Lib/plistlib.py

This module provides an interface for reading and writing the “property list”files used by Apple, primarily on macOS and iOS. This module supports both binaryand XML plist files.

The property list (.plist) file format is a simple serialization supportingbasic object types, like dictionaries, lists, numbers and strings. Usually thetop level object is a dictionary.

To write out and to parse a plist file, use thedump() andload() functions.

To work with plist data in bytes objects, usedumps()andloads().

Values can be strings, integers, floats, booleans, tuples, lists, dictionaries(but only with string keys),bytes,bytearrayordatetime.datetime objects.

This module defines the following functions:

plistlib.load(fp,*,fmt=None,dict_type=dict)¶

Read a plist file.fp should be a readable and binary file object.Return the unpacked root object (which usually is adictionary).

Thefmt is the format of the file and the following values are valid:

• None: Autodetect the file format

• FMT_XML: XML file format

• FMT_BINARY: Binary plist format

Thedict_type is the type used for dictionaries that are read from theplist file.

XML data for theFMT_XML format is parsed using the Expat parserfromxml.parsers.expat – see its documentation for possibleexceptions on ill-formed XML. Unknown elements will simply be ignoredby the plist parser.

The parser for the binary format raisesInvalidFileExceptionwhen the file cannot be parsed.

New in version 3.4.

plistlib.loads(data,*,fmt=None,dict_type=dict)¶

Load a plist from a bytes object. Seeload() for an explanation ofthe keyword arguments.

New in version 3.4.

plistlib.dump(value,fp,*,fmt=FMT_XML,sort_keys=True,skipkeys=False)¶

Writevalue to a plist file.Fp should be a writable, binaryfile object.

Thefmt argument specifies the format of the plist file and can beone of the following values:

• FMT_XML: XML formatted plist file

• FMT_BINARY: Binary formatted plist file

Whensort_keys is true (the default) the keys for dictionaries will bewritten to the plist in sorted order, otherwise they will be written inthe iteration order of the dictionary.

Whenskipkeys is false (the default) the function raisesTypeErrorwhen a key of a dictionary is not a string, otherwise such keys are skipped.

ATypeError will be raised if the object is of an unsupported type ora container that contains objects of unsupported types.

AnOverflowError will be raised for integer values that cannotbe represented in (binary) plist files.

New in version 3.4.

plistlib.dumps(value,*,fmt=FMT_XML,sort_keys=True,skipkeys=False)¶

Returnvalue as a plist-formatted bytes object. Seethe documentation fordump() for an explanation of the keywordarguments of this function.

New in version 3.4.

The following classes are available:

classplistlib.UID(data)¶

Wraps anint. This is used when reading or writing NSKeyedArchiverencoded data, which contains UID (see PList manual).

It has one attribute,data, which can be used to retrieve the int valueof the UID.data must be in the range0<=data<2**64.

New in version 3.8.

The following constants are available:

plistlib.FMT_XML¶

The XML format for plist files.

New in version 3.4.

plistlib.FMT_BINARY¶

The binary format for plist files

New in version 3.4.

pl=dict(aString="Doodah",aList=["A","B",12,32.1,[1,2,3]],aFloat=0.1,anInt=728,aDict=dict(anotherString="<hello & hi there!>",aThirdString="M\xe4ssig, Ma\xdf",aTrueValue=True,aFalseValue=False,),someData=b"<binary gunk>",someMoreData=b"<lots of binary gunk>"*10,aDate=datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(time.mktime(time.gmtime())),)withopen(fileName,'wb')asfp:dump(pl,fp)

withopen(fileName,'rb')asfp:pl=load(fp)print(pl["aKey"])