How do I create json file from plist file?

Question

I want to create a json file from from existing plist file. How do I create json file from plist file using one of these programming languages: Javascript or Java or Objective-c or Python or Ruby?

Ilailaire

I am not sure if any plist could be expressed as a JASON file, what plist exactly you want to convert? – Flub

Answer 1

Python has a module plistlib which you can use to read plist files. plistlib is available in python >= 2.6, so if you have old version you can get plistlib from here.

After reading plist as dict using plistlib.readPlist you can dump it as JSON using json.dumps, for that use json module or for old python version get simplejson

Here is an example:

plist = """<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>aDict</key>
    <dict>
        <key>anotherString</key>
        <string>&lt;hello hi there!&gt;</string>
    </dict>
    <key>aList</key>
    <array>
        <string>A</string>
        <string>B</string>
        <integer>12</integer>
        <real>32.100000000000001</real>
        <array>
            <integer>1</integer>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <integer>3</integer>
        </array>
    </array>
    <key>aString</key>
    <string>Doodah</string>
</dict>
</plist>
"""

import json
from plistlib import readPlist
import StringIO

in_file = StringIO.StringIO(plist)
plist_dict = readPlist(in_file)

print json.dumps(plist_dict)

Output:

{"aList": ["A", "B", 12, 32.100000000000001, [1, 2, 3]], "aDict": {"anotherString": "<hello hi there!>"}, "aString": "Doodah"}

Metalwork

Answer 2

On OSX you can use the plutil command line tool:

plutil -convert json Data.plist

It isn't using one of those languages, but it saves you from implementing it yourself or messing with libraries.

Erroneous

plutil -convert json Data.plist -e json makes sure it doesn't overwrite the original file and creates a new file with the same name but with the .json extension – Orchardist

Sadly, even as of Monterey, this utility fails too often to be of general use. – Toritorie

Answer 3

Load the property list and get a dictionary out of it. Then using one of the many JSON frameworks, initialize a store-like object (an object that takes a dictionary as input) and write that out to a file. Should create your JSON just fine.

Decommission