iOS UITableView; saving cell checkmarks to disk

Question

As per suggestion on SO, I am posting my code here to be reviewed. It was said I should not be saving and reading from disk so many times when a user selects and deselects a cell in my tableView.

@property (nonatomic, strong) IBOutlet UITableView *tableView;
@property (nonatomic, strong) NSArray *list;

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];

    self.list = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"Alabama", @"Alaska", @"Arizona", 
    @"Arkansas", @"California", @"Colorado", @"Connecticut", @"Delaware", @"District of Columbia",
    @"Florida", @"Georgia", @"Hawaii", @"Idaho", @"Illinois", @"Indiana", @"Iowa", @"Kansas", 
    @"Kentucky", @"Louisiana", @"Maine", @"Maryland", @"Massachusetts", @"Michigan", @"Minnesota",
    @"Mississippi", @"Missouri", @"Montana", @"Nebraska", @"Nevada", @"New Hampshire", 
    @"New Jersey", @"New Mexico", @"New York", @"North Carolina", @"North Dakota", @"Ohio",     @"Oklahoma",
    @"Oregon", @"Pennsylvania", @"Rhode Island", @"South Carolina", @"South Dakota", 
    @"Tennessee", @"Texas", @"Utah", @"Vermont", @"Virginia", @"Washington", @"West Virginia", 
    @"Wisconsin", @"Wyoming", nil];
}

- (NSString *)SettingsPlist
{
    NSString *paths = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) objectAtIndex:0];
    NSString *PlistPath = [paths stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Settings.plist"];
    return PlistPath;
}

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView
 numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    return [[self list] count];
}

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    NSString *contentForThisRow = [[self list] objectAtIndex:[indexPath row]];
    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"Cell"];

    if(cell == nil)
    {
        cell = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:@"Cell"];
    }

    NSDictionary *dict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:[self SettingsPlist]];

    NSString *row = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d",indexPath.row];

    if([[dict objectForKey:row]isEqualToString:@"0"])
    {
        cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;
    }
    else
    {
        cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark;
    }

    [[cell textLabel] setText:contentForThisRow];

    return cell;
}

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    NSMutableDictionary *plist = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:[self SettingsPlist]];

    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];

    NSString *row = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d",indexPath.row];

    if(cell.accessoryType == UITableViewCellAccessoryNone)
    {
        cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark;
        NSString *on = @"1";
        [plist setObject:on forKey:row];
        [plist writeToFile:[self SettingsPlist] atomically:YES];
    }
    else if(cell.accessoryType == UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark)
    {
        cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;
        NSString *off = @"0";
        [plist setObject:off forKey:row];
        [plist writeToFile:[self SettingsPlist] atomically:YES];
    }
    [tableView deselectRowAtIndexPath:indexPath animated:YES];
}

Answer 1

you should read the settings plist once in -viewDidLoad: and save the contents as a dictionary to a property.

As you are doing, it is a huge performance hit as the disk will be accessed every time a cell appears on screen during scrolling.

In -tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: and -tableView:didSelectRowAtIndexPath: you then should only work on that dictionary.

Further more you could introduce a singleton-like shared object, that holds the settings and can be accessed in any class.

see my example code for how to do multiple selection and keeping track of the selected contents.