title: Is it possible to serialize custom objects to a plist file in Objective-C?
body: <p>For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that we have the following simple class interface:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@interface Person : NSObject &lt;NSCoding&gt; {
    NSString *firstname;
    NSString *lastname;
  }
  
  @property (copy) NSString *firstname;
  @property (copy) NSString *lastname;
  
  @end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is it possible to serialize this object into a plist (assuming that the NSCoding protocol is implemented correctly)?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Update December, 31st 2010 14:40</strong></p>
  
  <p>I have some follow up questions on this. Is it possible to have <code>NSKeyedArchiver</code> export the plist as XML? Furthermore, is it possible to dump the XML into variable instead of a file?</p>