plist
Kevin Ballard

plist is a ruby extension that provides a means to read/write OS X property lists.

It requires the presence of CoreFoundation, which means it currently only works under darwin.

Usage:

One new module is provided, named PropertyList. It has the following 2 methods:

PropertyList.load(input, format = false)
  Loads the property list from input, which is either an IO, StringIO, or a string. Format is an optional parameter - if 
  false, the return value is the converted property list object. If true, the return value is a 2-element array, the 
  first element being the returned value and the second being a symbol identifying the property list format.

PropertyList.dump(output, obj, format = :xml1)
  Dumps the property list object into output, which is either an IO or StringIO. Format determines the property list 
  format to write out. The supported values are :xml1,, :binary1, and :openstep; however, OpenStep format appears to not 
  be supported by the system for output anymore.

The valid formats are :xml1, :binary1, and :openstep. When loading a property list, if the format is something else (not 
possible under any current OS, but perhaps if a future OS includes another type) then the format will be :unknown.

This module also provides a method on Object:

Object#to_plist(format = :xml1)
  This is the same as PropertyList.dump except it outputs the property list as a string return value instead of writing 
  it to a stream

This module also provides 2 methods on String:

String#blob?
  Returns whether the string is a blob.

String#blob=
  Sets whether the string is a blob.

A blob is a string that's been converted from a <data> property list item. When dumping to a property list, any strings 
that are blobs are written as <data> items rather than <string> items.

INSTALLATION:
  ruby extconf.rb
  make
  ruby test.rb
  sudo make install