Question

I have to connect to a URL to check whether the records is empty. The response looks something like this:

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<find>
<record_id>1234</record_id>
<no_record>00001</no_record>
<entry_num>00001</entry_num>
<session-id>aijheifaohqrihelrkqn324tlejaofjaf</session-id>
</find>

My codes:

                NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init]
                                                autorelease];
                [request setURL:[NSURL URLWithString: finalSearchURL]];

                // Content-Type related.
                [request setValue:@"application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
               forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Type"];

                // Create Connection.
                NSURLConnection *conn = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];

                if (conn) {
                    // The connection was established.
                    NSMutableData *receivedData =  [[NSMutableData alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:request]];
                    NSLog( @"Data will be received from URL: %@", request.URL );
                    NSLog(@"Recieved Data 2: %@", receivedData);
                }
                else
                {
                    // The download could not be made.
                    NSLog( @"Data could not be received from: %@", request.URL );
                }

But it returns me:

Recieved Data : <3c3f786d 6c207665 7273696f 6e203d20 22312e30 2220656e 636f6469 6e67203d 20225554 462d3822 3f3e0a3c 66696e64 3e0a3c73 65745f6e 756d6265 723e3031 39303633 3c2f7365 745f6e75 6d626572 3e0a3c6e 6f5f7265 636f7264 733e3030 30303030 3030313c 2f6e6f5f 7265636f 7264733e 0a3c6e6f 5f656e74 72696573 3e303030 30303030 30313c2f 6e6f5f65 6e747269 65733e0a 3c736573 73696f6e 2d69643e 4d505843 33323433 58564336 4534454a 41464232 45473541 39374237 584e3832 43554631 4e314234 584e4c37 424c5947 4e533c2f 73657373 696f6e2d 69643e0a 3c2f6669 6e643e0a 20>

Can anyone help to tell me what am I doing wrong? This is my first attempt for getting response from a url please help thanks!

Answer 1

See the data as a string this way:

NSString *string = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:receivedData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSLog(@"the xml string is %@", string);

If the parsing goal is simple enough – like just to find the value of one tag – you can use string methods to parse. Otherwise, NSXMLParser or several other options are available.

To see if the string contains a substring, you can do something like this:

if (string) {
    NSRange range = [string rangeOfString:@"<session-id>"];
    if (range.location != NSNotFound) {
        // session-id tag is at index range.location, so we know it's there
    }
}