NSString: newline escape in plist

Question

I'm writing a property list to be in the resources bundle of my application. An NSString object in the plist needs to have line-breaks in it. I tried \n, but that doesn't work. What do I do to have newlines in my string in the plist?

Thanks.

Phuongphycology

Answer 1

If you're editing the plist in Xcode's inbuild plist editor, you can press option-return to enter a line break within a string value.

Ganglion

adding line breaks manually may work if the files are static and few. But not really a "true" (code based) solution. The only code based solutions are those from Mihai Damian and justAfix. – Warford

This seems to work just fine for me in iOS 7 with a UILabel, however it doesn't seem to be working with iOS 6. I'm using option+return in the plist, but my UILabel in iOS 6 doesn't have the line break. Is anyone else seeing this behavior? – Limbert

I didn't find option-return key in my keyboard. I clicked the row in plist file and pressed the Option+Enter key on my keyboard but nothing appears to change. What should i do ? – Scrannel

Answer 2

I found a simpler solution:

NSString *newString = [oldString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"\\n" withString:@"\n"];

It seems the string reader escapes all characters that need to be escaped such that the text from the plist is rendered verbatim. This code effectively drops the extra escape.

Flurry

Answer 3

Edit your plist using a text editor instead of Xcode's plist editor. Then you simply put line breaks in your strings directly:

<string>foo
bar</string>

Tomfool

Sometimes the simplest solutions are best – Trompe

You can get the same effect if you hold Option/Alt key while pressing enter directly inside Xcode plist file. – Inkberry

Answer 4

a little late, but i discovered the same issue and i also discovered a fix or workaround. so for anyone who stumbles on this will get an answer :)

so the problem is when you read a string from a file, \n will be 2 characters unlike in xcode the compiler will recognize \n as one.

so i extended the NSString class like this:

"NSString+newLineToString.h":

@interface NSString(newLineToString)    
-(NSString*)newLineToString;   
@end

"NSString+newLineToString.m":

#import "NSString+newLineToString.h"

@implementation NSString(newLineToString)

-(NSString*)newLineToString
{
    NSString *string = @"";
    NSArray *chunks = [self componentsSeparatedByString: @"\\n"];

    for(id str in chunks){
        if([string isEqualToString:@""]){
            string = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@",str];
        }else{
            string = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@\n%@",string,str];
        }

    }
    return string;
} 
@end

How to use it:

rootDict = [[NSDictionary alloc]initWithContentsOfFile:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"yourFile" ofType:@"plist"]];

NSString *string = [[rootDict objectForKey:@"myString"] newLineToString];

its quick and dirty, be aware that \\n in your file will not be recognize as \n so if you need to write \n on text you have to modify the method :)

Pasadena

superb fix. And interesting observation. Saved me days of effort. Its essentially same as Mihai Damian's solution but this one really explains the reason behind it. – Warford

Answer 5

This is how I do loading my plist in Swift 2.0:

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>STRING_TEXT</key>
    <string>This string contains an emoji and a double underscore😎!__The double undescore is converted when the plist item is read.</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Swift 2.0:

import Foundation

var stringTextRaw = plistValueForString(keyname:"STRING_TEXT")
var stringText = stringTextRaw.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("__", withString: "\r")



func plistValueForString(keyname keyname:String) -> String {

  let filePath = NSBundle.mainBundle().pathForResource("StringsToUse", ofType:"plist")
  let plist = NSDictionary(contentsOfFile:filePath!)

  let value:String = plist?.objectForKey(keyname) as! String
  return value
}

So I first get the stored plist value into the xxRaw variable and then search for __ "double undescore" and replace that with "\r" ie carriage return for a newline and this is placed into the final variable.

Phillane