CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xcodecompiler-errorsplist
jhilgert00
jhilgert00

Reputation: 5489

Xcode "Cannot parse contents of Info.plist"

I just hit a brick wall with xCode not wanting to parse my Info.plist file. I've replaced the file several times with older (identical) versions of the file that I had previously backed up, and I'm still getting the same error.

Here is the complete error message: 

couldn't parse contents of '/Users/...Info.plist': The data couldn’t be read because it isn’t in the correct format.

I'm clueless on this one. I'm using xCode 5.0.1, Mavericks

Upvotes: 41

Views: 35239

Answers (9)

Aman Kumar Gupta
Aman Kumar Gupta

Reputation: 3011

This error comes whenever Xcode preprocessor is not able to parse the info.plist file.

So to find out the error in the specific line do the following steps :

  1. Open your project.xcworkspace in Xcode
  2. Go to the project's navigator
  3. Inside your project click on the info file, if an error exists then it will popup the dialog with the line number where the error exists

You can see the below image of the popup dialog for reference, which is in my case was showing the error on line 35

enter image description here

Hope this will help you or somebody else. Thanks!

Happy Coding :-)

Upvotes: 0

Kqtr
Kqtr

Reputation: 5935

This may also simply happen because you have moved the Info.plist file into a new folder, or removed it from a folder (basically, if its path changed).

Go to Build Settings and search for "Info.plist file". Edit the value. For instance, if you have moved your plist file from the main folder to a subfolder called Resources, you will have to do the following change:

Before:

TargetName/Info.plist

After:

TargetName/Resources/Info.plist

Upvotes: 2

Immanito
Immanito

Reputation: 49

I think you have used source-control tools, you can use basic text-edit tool without Xcode to open this plist, command + F to find "<<<<<" or ">>>>>", then you will probably find error string such as:

<<<<<<< .mine

>>>>>>> .r605

select the correct string, and delete the other one, error is resolve!

Upvotes: 4

Vizllx
Vizllx

Reputation: 9246

This is one of the best way to detect on which line the error is occurring.

Just go the directory where the plist file is present then write this command on terminal->

plutil filename.plist

Upvotes: 86

Surpher
Surpher

Reputation: 537

I personally ruined the file when git merge raised conflicts. .plist is an XML file and git conflict added <<<< and >>>> in there to tag the differences.

Find the .plist file in Finder (in one of your project's folders). Open it in a text editor, find the lines that don't look like proper XML, remove them and be sure to remove the duplicate XML line/node (due to pre and post git recorded changes).

Upvotes: 2

Kelan
Kelan

Reputation: 2276

I was having the same error, and realized the issue was that I had a URL (e.g. http://example.com/something) as a value in my Info.plist, and I just switched on pre-processing for it (without the -traditional flag). Apparently Xcode will treat the // as a comment marker, and omit the rest of the line.

A work-around I found is to embrace the pre-processor, like so: http:/${}/example.com/something, which breaks up the // by putting an empty string substation in the middle so it doesn't look like a comment to Xcode, but after pre-processing it's back to a normal URL.

Upvotes: 0

Jason King
Jason King

Reputation: 659

When building for iOS, the Info.plist may be corrupted whenever Default Orientation is set to Auto Rotation. The Info.plist file is created properly on the first build, but subsequent builds results in...

<key>UIInterfaceOrientation</key>
<string></string>
</string>

... at this point Xcode fails to build the project.

Upvotes: 1

capikaw
capikaw

Reputation: 12946

Another cause of this issue can be from attempting to put URLs (really just slashes etc.) in your app-Info.plist.

Get around it by simply raising the -traditional flag inside of the Info.plist Other Preprocessor Flags option in your project build settings.

enter image description here

Upvotes: 15

jhilgert00
jhilgert00

Reputation: 5489

Looks like replacing the file with a backup, then deleting the derived data for the project in Organizer was the cure. Hope this helps someone else later on.

Upvotes: 2

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