Get the entire XML downloaded data

Question

I have an outdated application which use to download an XML document and parse it on the iPhone app, I used the NSURLConnection for that purpose:

-(void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response
{
    //NSLog(@"Response :%@",response);
    responseData = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
}

-(void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data
{
    NSString *str = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data 
                                          encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

    [responseData appendString:str];
    [str release];
}

-(void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection
{

    NSLog(@"DATA : %@",responseData);   

    if (responseData != nil) {

        [self startParsing:responseData];//Parse the data
        [responseData release];
    }   
}   

Since moving to use NSXMLParserDelegate with AFXMLRequestOperation, I cannot figure out a way to get xml data properly:

- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didStartElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName attributes:(NSDictionary *)attributeDict{

    [responseData appendString:elementName];
    [responseData appendString:namespaceURI];
    [responseData appendString:qName];

}
- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string{
    [responseData appendString:string];

}
- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didEndElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName{
    [responseData appendString:elementName];
    [responseData appendString:namespaceURI];
    [responseData appendString:qName];


}
-(void) parserDidEndDocument:(NSXMLParser *)parser{
    [SVProgressHUD showSuccessWithStatus:@"Downloading completed"];

        NSLog(@"DATA : %@",responseData);//not properly appended, tags delimeters are missing 

        if (responseData != nil) {

            [self startParsing:responseData];
            [responseData release];
        }


}

How to append all the data received from the server in the responseData mutable string ? I debugged the data received after finishing downloading and the xml is missing tags delimeters <>. I think I ma missing the way to get the xml data.

P.S: Please note it's important that I get the xml in a NSMutableString object.

@Fermi

I used AFURLConnectionOperation as you recommended, it works fine with my purpose, but I noticed that my received data is not catched by the delegate methods, instead I can get the data in a completion block:

NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:API_URL]];

AFURLConnectionOperation *operation = [[AFURLConnectionOperation alloc] initWithRequest:request];
operation.completionBlock = ^{
    NSLog(@"Complete: %@",operation.responseString);//responseString is my data


};
[operation start];
[SVProgressHUD showWithStatus:@"Downloading files"];

wo since NSURLConnection delegate methods are not called, how can I manage failure, etc? Thanx.

Answer 1

AFXMLRequestOperation is explicitly intended to be used to return you an NSXMLDocument instance, NOT a raw XML string.

If you want the XML string use AFURLConnectionOperation and build the NSMutableString the same way you do with NSURLConnection.