plist

Overview ¶

Package plist provides plist parsing and writing for Apple configuration files. Supports XML, binary, and JSON plist formats.

Parsing ¶

Parse plist data from any format with auto-detection:

data, _ := os.ReadFile("Info.plist")
v, err := plist.ParseBytes(data)

// Or parse directly from a file
v, err := plist.ParseFile("Info.plist")

Accessing Values ¶

Use typed accessor functions with key paths:

bundleID := plist.String(v, "CFBundleIdentifier")
version := plist.Int(v, "CFBundleVersion")

Struct Marshal/Unmarshal ¶

Encode and decode Go structs using the "plist" struct tag:

type Info struct {
	BundleID string `plist:"CFBundleIdentifier"`
	Version  int    `plist:"CFBundleVersion"`
}

data, err := plist.Marshal(info, plist.FormatXML)

var info Info
_, err := plist.Unmarshal(data, &info)

Writing ¶

Write plist data in any supported format:

plist.WriteXML(os.Stdout, v)
plist.WriteJSON(os.Stdout, v)
plist.WriteBinary(os.Stdout, v)
plist.WriteToFile("output.plist", v, plist.FormatXML)

NSKeyedArchiver and UID ¶

Binary plists produced by NSKeyedArchiver use UID values to reference objects in the $objects array. The UID type preserves these references when parsing and writing binary plists:

v, _ := plist.ParseBytes(data)
m := v.(map[string]any)
top := m["$top"].(map[string]any)
ref := top["root"].(plist.UID) // UID referencing an entry in $objects