Old-style plist linter

Question

I am writing an application that generates .xcodeproj files. It's generated a .pbxproj file, however when opening it in Xcode, I get an error message, "cannot be opened because the project file cannot be parsed." and nothing more.

Is there a reliable application for syntax parsing old-style plists?

If it requires me to use low-level Cocoa APIs, I'm fine with that, but some pointers at least?

Isn't a plist just XML data? An XML validator, using [Apple's DTD](http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd) might be all you'd need... — inspector-g, Oct 31 '13 at 18:49
didn't it get "corrupted" during a version controlling merge? which you could easily fix — benka, Nov 01 '13 at 14:41
@benka It's not version control. It's a custom application I'm writing that mimics Xcode's create project feature. — bobbybee, Nov 01 '13 at 20:01

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 01 '13 at 20:49

You should take a look at Xcodeproj.

It's not a linter, but it may help you to understand why your project isn't being opened correctly.

You have a few options:

Try to parse your project with Xcodeproj to see if it gives you more useful errors.
You don't mention what language you're writing in, but if it's ruby, you could simply use the gem directly.
See if you can call the CF calls directly. You'll note that the part of Xcodeproj that actually writes to the file calls this c extension which simply uses CFPropertyListWriteToStream.

This all assumes that your problem is one that could actually be solved by a linter. If your formatting is correct but you're writing values that somehow confuse Xcode then these suggestions may not apply, although I do think reading through the Xcodeproj source would help you.

Old-style plist linter

1 Answers1