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<div class="section" id="module-plistlib">
<span id="plistlib-generate-and-parse-mac-os-x-plist-files"></span><h1>13.6. <a class="reference internal" href="#module-plistlib" title="plistlib: Generate and parse Mac OS X plist files."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">plistlib</span></code></a> — Generate and parse Mac OS X <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">.plist</span></code> files<a class="headerlink" href="#module-plistlib" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<div class="versionchanged">
<p><span class="versionmodified changed">Changed in version 2.6: </span>This module was previously only available in the Mac-specific library, it is
now available for all platforms.</p>
</div>
<p id="index-0"><strong>Source code:</strong> <a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/python/cpython/tree/2.7/Lib/plistlib.py">Lib/plistlib.py</a></p>
<hr class="docutils" />
<p>This module provides an interface for reading and writing the “property list”
XML files used mainly by Mac OS X.</p>
<p>The property list (<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">.plist</span></code>) 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.</p>
<p>Values can be strings, integers, floats, booleans, tuples, lists, dictionaries
(but only with string keys), <a class="reference internal" href="#plistlib.Data" title="plistlib.Data"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Data</span></code></a> or <a class="reference internal" href="datetime.html#datetime.datetime" title="datetime.datetime"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">datetime.datetime</span></code></a>
objects. String values (including dictionary keys) may be unicode strings –
they will be written out as UTF-8.</p>
<p>The <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre"><data></span></code> plist type is supported through the <a class="reference internal" href="#plistlib.Data" title="plistlib.Data"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Data</span></code></a> class. This is
a thin wrapper around a Python string. Use <a class="reference internal" href="#plistlib.Data" title="plistlib.Data"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Data</span></code></a> if your strings
contain control characters.</p>
<div class="admonition seealso">
<p class="admonition-title">See also</p>
<dl class="simple">
<dt><a class="reference external" href="https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/plist.5.html">PList manual page</a></dt><dd><p>Apple’s documentation of the file format.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</div>
<p>This module defines the following functions:</p>
<dl class="function">
<dt id="plistlib.readPlist">
<code class="descclassname">plistlib.</code><code class="descname">readPlist</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>pathOrFile</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#plistlib.readPlist" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Read a plist file. <em>pathOrFile</em> may either be a file name or a (readable)
file object. Return the unpacked root object (which usually is a
dictionary).</p>
<p>The XML data is parsed using the Expat parser from <a class="reference internal" href="pyexpat.html#module-xml.parsers.expat" title="xml.parsers.expat: An interface to the Expat non-validating XML parser."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">xml.parsers.expat</span></code></a>
– see its documentation for possible exceptions on ill-formed XML.
Unknown elements will simply be ignored by the plist parser.</p>
</dd></dl>
<dl class="function">
<dt id="plistlib.writePlist">
<code class="descclassname">plistlib.</code><code class="descname">writePlist</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>rootObject</em>, <em>pathOrFile</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#plistlib.writePlist" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Write <em>rootObject</em> to a plist file. <em>pathOrFile</em> may either be a file name
or a (writable) file object.</p>
<p>A <a class="reference internal" href="exceptions.html#exceptions.TypeError" title="exceptions.TypeError"><code class="xref py py-exc docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">TypeError</span></code></a> will be raised if the object is of an unsupported type or
a container that contains objects of unsupported types.</p>
</dd></dl>
<dl class="function">
<dt id="plistlib.readPlistFromString">
<code class="descclassname">plistlib.</code><code class="descname">readPlistFromString</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>data</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#plistlib.readPlistFromString" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Read a plist from a string. Return the root object.</p>
</dd></dl>
<dl class="function">
<dt id="plistlib.writePlistToString">
<code class="descclassname">plistlib.</code><code class="descname">writePlistToString</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>rootObject</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#plistlib.writePlistToString" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Return <em>rootObject</em> as a plist-formatted string.</p>
</dd></dl>
<dl class="function">
<dt id="plistlib.readPlistFromResource">
<code class="descclassname">plistlib.</code><code class="descname">readPlistFromResource</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>path</em>, <em>restype='plst'</em>, <em>resid=0</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#plistlib.readPlistFromResource" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Read a plist from the resource with type <em>restype</em> from the resource fork of
<em>path</em>. Availability: Mac OS X.</p>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="admonition-title">Note</p>
<p>In Python 3.x, this function has been removed.</p>
</div>
</dd></dl>
<dl class="function">
<dt id="plistlib.writePlistToResource">
<code class="descclassname">plistlib.</code><code class="descname">writePlistToResource</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>rootObject</em>, <em>path</em>, <em>restype='plst'</em>, <em>resid=0</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#plistlib.writePlistToResource" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Write <em>rootObject</em> as a resource with type <em>restype</em> to the resource fork of
<em>path</em>. Availability: Mac OS X.</p>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="admonition-title">Note</p>
<p>In Python 3.x, this function has been removed.</p>
</div>
</dd></dl>
<p>The following class is available:</p>
<dl class="class">
<dt id="plistlib.Data">
<em class="property">class </em><code class="descclassname">plistlib.</code><code class="descname">Data</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>data</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#plistlib.Data" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Return a “data” wrapper object around the string <em>data</em>. This is used in
functions converting from/to plists to represent the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre"><data></span></code> type
available in plists.</p>
<p>It has one attribute, <code class="xref py py-attr docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">data</span></code>, that can be used to retrieve the Python
string stored in it.</p>
</dd></dl>
<div class="section" id="examples">
<h2>13.6.1. Examples<a class="headerlink" href="#examples" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Generating a plist:</p>
<div class="highlight-default notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="n">pl</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="nb">dict</span><span class="p">(</span>
<span class="n">aString</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"Doodah"</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">aList</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s2">"A"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"B"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">12</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mf">32.1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">3</span><span class="p">]],</span>
<span class="n">aFloat</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mf">0.1</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">anInt</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">728</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">aDict</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="nb">dict</span><span class="p">(</span>
<span class="n">anotherString</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"<hello & hi there!>"</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">aUnicodeValue</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="sa">u</span><span class="s1">'M</span><span class="se">\xe4</span><span class="s1">ssig, Ma</span><span class="se">\xdf</span><span class="s1">'</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">aTrueValue</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="kc">True</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">aFalseValue</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="kc">False</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="p">),</span>
<span class="n">someData</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">Data</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"<binary gunk>"</span><span class="p">),</span>
<span class="n">someMoreData</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">Data</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"<lots of binary gunk>"</span> <span class="o">*</span> <span class="mi">10</span><span class="p">),</span>
<span class="n">aDate</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">datetime</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">datetime</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">fromtimestamp</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">time</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">mktime</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">time</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">gmtime</span><span class="p">())),</span>
<span class="p">)</span>
<span class="c1"># unicode keys are possible, but a little awkward to use:</span>
<span class="n">pl</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="sa">u</span><span class="s1">'</span><span class="se">\xc5</span><span class="s1">benraa'</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"That was a unicode key."</span>
<span class="n">writePlist</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">pl</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">fileName</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Parsing a plist:</p>
<div class="highlight-default notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="n">pl</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">readPlist</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">pathOrFile</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="nb">print</span> <span class="n">pl</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s2">"aKey"</span><span class="p">]</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">13.6. <code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">plistlib</span></code> — Generate and parse Mac OS X <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">.plist</span></code> files</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#examples">13.6.1. Examples</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h4>Previous topic</h4>
<p class="topless"><a href="xdrlib.html"
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<h4>Next topic</h4>
<p class="topless"><a href="crypto.html"
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distrib
>
Mageia
>
7
>
armv7hl
>
media
>
core-updates
>
by-pkgid
>
e1011ddec34cda34f3a002b121247943
>
files
>
876
