iOS Reading .css in iphone

[arnieterm]

I have tried parsing a locally stored .css file using the below given code but it gives error

NSString* strFilePath = [ [ NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"stylesheet" ofType:@"css"];
		NSData* data = [ [ NSData alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:strFilePath];
		NSString* string;
		NSDictionary *dictionary;
		string = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
		dictionary = [string propertyList];
		[string release];

The error is as given below

		 NSParseErrorException', reason: 'XML parser error:
		 Unexpected character . at line 1
		 Old-style plist parser error:
		 Unexpected ';' or '=' after key at line 2

Whats wrong with the code snipet? Is there any other way to parse the .css file on iphone?
Thanks
Arnieterm

 

[robbieduncan]

I've asked the mods to move this to iPhone Programming for you...

I am a little confused as to what you think will happen. You get a path to a CSS file. You load that into NSData object then turn that into a NSString (why: you could have just loaded it straight to the string). You then try to create a NSDictionary from this string. This is where I am confused. You turn any arbitrary string into a dictionary. As noted in the documentation for that method you need "a string in a property list format". A CSS file is not property list format. Which is why you get parse errors.

Oh and you are leaking both your NSData and NSString objects.

 

[arnieterm]

Thanks for your quick reply
I think I need to read the css entirely into an NSString and then iterate over it character by character to construct a dictionary from it, right?
In the last I need an NSDictionary constructed from this NSString iteration.
Though not tried yet, can we use NSKeyedUnarchive here?
Thanks again
Arnieterm

 

[robbieduncan]

Though not tried yet, can we use NSKeyedUnarchive here?

No as you don't have a keyed archive. You either have to parse the CSS yourself from scratch, use a third-party CSS parsing library (I don't know of any so I can't suggest one before you ask), or look at the documentation and see if there is anyway to get the UIWebView stuff to do what you want.