RSS Reader - plist or core data

Question

Hi, I am creating an RSS reader purely for my own educational purposes and am so far using plists to persist the feed references, unread counts etc.

Is this a wise choice or would I be better placed using core data instead?

Answer 1

Probably. Plists are fine for small amounts of data (especially things like storing preferences), but once you start having a lot of feeds and related information, you'll want to be using sqlite under the hood.

Answer 2

Property lists are going to get awkward for all but the smallest data sets. Core Data would work, but Brent Simmons (author of NetNewsWire) makes some really good arguments for why it's better to just use SQLite directly. I'm a big fan of Core Data but it's not right for every case and I think Brent's right about an RSS reader being a case where straight SQLite is better.