Question

I am sending a post containing text, numbers and data. The numbers and data work fine, but I’m having problems with the text, since it may contain an ampersand (&). For example

page.php?text=Hello World & Space.

Now I found that the “&” is received by server, but read as if a new variable starts. So it sees (I think):

text = "Hello World "
Space. =

I did read that I could try to encode the text to make it look like it’s a URL (like ” ” [space] turns into “%20”) but there is no way to encode it properly. I came to the conclusion:

textToPOST = [text stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

But that does NOT encode the ampersands, but everything else. So the result is:

some text ü blablabla

turns into

some%20text%20ü%20blablabla

with the & not encoded. So how can I do this, please help.

Thanks a lot already

Answer 1

Thanks for that answer and sorry for my premature posting :S I hope it at least helps anybody who has the same issue as I had. I just had a chat with a friend and he told me:

To display and ampersand in XML simply use the & quote. Unlike with a pure “&”, the NSXMLParser won’t output an error. Using & also allows you to make other symbol escapes like:

• ü [in text] -> ü [in HTML] -> ü [in XML]
• Ä [in text] -> Ä [in HTML] -> Ä [in XML]
• ß [in text] -> ß [in HTML] -> ß [in XML]
• etc…

So that’s how you solve the “How do I parse XML with an amp in it problem“. Also I managed to make the code, from the website I linked in a comment to my original question, work:

NSMutableString *deutschEscaped = [NSMutableString stringWithString:[[deutschTextLabel string] stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"$" withString:@"%24" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"&" withString:@"%26" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"+" withString:@"%2B" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"," withString:@"%2C" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"/" withString:@"%2F" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@":" withString:@"%3A" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@";" withString:@"%3B" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"=" withString:@"%3D" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"?" withString:@"%3F" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"@" withString:@"%40" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@"%20" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"\t" withString:@"%09" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"#" withString:@"%23" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"<" withString:@"%3C" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@">" withString:@"%3E" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"\"" withString:@"%22" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];
[deutschEscaped replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"\n" withString:@"%0A" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [deutschEscaped length])];

This works fine for me and does replace ampersands and any other possible hazards.

If you don’t want many %20 escapes for every space, you can also use:

NSMutableString *englishEscaped = [NSMutableString stringWithString:[[englishTextLabel string] stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

Thank you all 🙂