Objective-C and Swift URL encoding

Question

I have a NSString like this:

http://www.

but I want to transform it to:

http%3A%2F%2Fwww.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

This is how I am doing this in swift.

extension String {
    func encodeURIComponent() -> String {
        return self.stringByAddingPercentEncodingWithAllowedCharacters(NSCharacterSet.URLQueryAllowedCharacterSet())!
    }

    func decodeURIComponent() -> String {
        return self.componentsSeparatedByString("+").joinWithSeparator(" ").stringByRemovingPercentEncoding!
    }
}

Answer 2

This is not my solution. Someone else wrote in stackoverflow but I have forgotten how.

Somehow this solution works "well". It handles diacritic, chinese characters, and pretty much anything else.

- (NSString *) URLEncodedString {
    NSMutableString * output = [NSMutableString string];
    const char * source = [self UTF8String];
    int sourceLen = strlen(source);
    for (int i = 0; i < sourceLen; ++i) {
        const unsigned char thisChar = (const unsigned char)source[i];
        if (false && thisChar == ' '){
            [output appendString:@"+"];
        } else if (thisChar == '.' || thisChar == '-' || thisChar == '_' || thisChar == '~' ||
                   (thisChar >= 'a' && thisChar <= 'z') ||
                   (thisChar >= 'A' && thisChar <= 'Z') ||
                   (thisChar >= '0' && thisChar <= '9')) {
            [output appendFormat:@"%c", thisChar];
        } else {
            [output appendFormat:@"%%%02X", thisChar];
        }
    }
    return output;
}

If someone would tell me who wrote this code, I'll really appreciate it. Basically he has some explanation why this encoded string will decode exactly as it wish.

I modified his solution a little. I like space to be represented with %20 rather than +. That's all.

Answer 3

Google implements this in their Google Toolbox for Mac. So that's a good place to peak how they're doing it. Another option is to include the Toolbox and use their implementation.

Checkout the implementation here. (Which comes down to exactly what people have been posting here).

Answer 4

 NSString * encodedString = (NSString *)CFURLCreateStringByAddingPercentEscapes(NUL,(CFStringRef)@"parameter",NULL,(CFStringRef)@"!*'();@&+$,/?%#[]~=_-.:",kCFStringEncodingUTF8 );

NSURL * url = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString:[@"address here" stringByAppendingFormat:@"?cid=%@",encodedString, nil]];

Answer 5

It's called URL encoding. More here.

-(NSString *)urlEncodeUsingEncoding:(NSStringEncoding)encoding {
    return (NSString *)CFURLCreateStringByAddingPercentEscapes(NULL,
           (CFStringRef)self,
           NULL,
           (CFStringRef)@"!*'\"();:@&=+$,/?%#[]% ",
           CFStringConvertNSStringEncodingToEncoding(encoding));
}

Answer 6

//use NSString instance method like this:

+ (NSString *)encodeURIComponent:(NSString *)string
{
NSString *s = [string stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
return s;
}

+ (NSString *)decodeURIComponent:(NSString *)string
{
NSString *s = [string stringByReplacingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
return s;
}

remember,you should only do encode or decode for your parameter value, not all the url you request.