- A property list, or plist, is an XML file that contains key-value data.
- info.plist stores essential configurations of your applications
- Everything you write to the bundle of the app, goes to plist
- Store only small amount of data
- UserDefaults allows us to store Strings, Numbers, Dates, Data and Arrays or Dictionaries.
- It is a small amount of data what we should be storing in UserDefaults.
- Usually it should be used to store user preferences, or anything as long as it's a small amount of persistent information.
- Every piece of data we store will have a unique key, if we try saving things with the same key, new data will only replace the old data.
- Should never be used for sensitive data as its not encrypted (eg. Authentication Token, passwords).
- Secure and encrypted information store.
- Items stored in the keychain belong to a container that is shared by the operating system.
- stored locally, can also sync to iCloud.
- If you store a key-value pair in the keychain, and delete your app without clearing the keychain, that item will persist.
- Stores larger amount of data in model scheme compared to FileSystem which can also store large amount of data but is not in modeled scheme.
- Realm is a cross platform database(iOS, Android, Web)
- It can be used in place of CoreData for persisting data in iOS. It was designed to be faster and more efficient than other solutions.
| Feature | Core Data | Realm |
|---|---|---|
| Easy to set up | - | XX |
| Speed | X | XX |
| Crossplatform | - | XX |
| Thread safe | X | X |
| Documentation | X | XXX |
| DB Management | External tools | Realm studio |