What am I doing wrong here? It keeps telling me to "instantiate the contents of the dictionary from the plist!."

Question

Here is my code:
```plist.swift
import Foundation
// Add your code below
let plistPath = NSBundle.mainBundle().pathForResource("CrazyInformation", ofType: "plist") 
let dictionary = NSDictionary(contentsOfFile: plistPath)
```

Martin Wildfeuer · Answer

The problem here is that pathForResource returns an optional String -> String?, as it might well be that the file does not exist/can't be found. However, you do not unwrap the return value in your code. In practice, you would be doing something like this
objective-c
// Optional binding
if let plistPath = NSBundle.mainBundle().pathForResource("CrazyInformation", ofType: "plist") {
   let dictionary = NSDictionary(contentsOfFile: plistPath)
}

or
objective-c
// Optional binding
if let unwrappedPlistPath = plistPath {
    let dictionary = NSDictionary(contentsOfFile: unwrappedPlistPath)
}

For the sake of this course, you may also force-unwrap the return value. This is, of course, not a good idea in practice, as you can never be 100% sure that the return value is not nil.
objective-c
// Forced unwrapping
let dictionary = NSDictionary(contentsOfFile: plistPath!)

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Vaibhav Tank

Vaibhav Tank

What am I doing wrong here? It keeps telling me to "instantiate the contents of the dictionary from the plist!."

1 Answer

Martin Wildfeuer

Martin Wildfeuer