plistlib

plistlib is a Python standard library module for working with Apple property list files, commonly used to store configuration data on macOS and iOS. It can read and write both XML plist files and the binary plist format, and it maps plist data structures to Python data types.

Supported types include dictionaries, lists, strings, numbers (ints and floats), booleans, dates, and binary data (as bytes). The module can serialize Python objects to plist-compatible representations and parse plists back into Python objects, preserving the basic structure and values.

API and usage: primary entry points are load and dump for file-like objects, and loads and dumps for bytes or strings. For example, you can read a plist from a file with plistlib.load(fp) and write one with plistlib.dump(data, fp).

plistlib has been part of the Python standard library since Python 3.4 and is cross-platform. It is intended for simple configuration data and does not support serializing arbitrary Python objects; complex objects should be converted to plist-native types before writing.