Question

Wondering if there is an easy way to do a simple HTML escape/unescape in Objective C. What I want is something like this psuedo code:

NSString *string = @'<span>Foo</span>'; [string stringByUnescapingHTML]; 

Which returns

<span>Foo</span> 

Hopefully unescaping all other HTML entities as well and even ASCII codes like Ӓ and the like.

Is there any methods in Cocoa Touch/UIKit to do this?

Answer 1

This link contains the solution below. Cocoa CF has the CFXMLCreateStringByUnescapingEntities function but that’s not available on the iPhone.

@interface MREntitiesConverter : NSObject <NSXMLParserDelegate>{     NSMutableString* resultString; }  @property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableString* resultString;  - (NSString*)convertEntitiesInString:(NSString*)s;  @end   @implementation MREntitiesConverter  @synthesize resultString;  - (id)init {     if([super init]) {         resultString = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];     }     return self; }  - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)s {         [self.resultString appendString:s]; }  - (NSString*)convertEntitiesInString:(NSString*)s {     if (!s) {         NSLog(@'ERROR : Parameter string is nil');     }     NSString* xmlStr = [NSString stringWithFormat:@'<d>%@</d>', s];     NSData *data = [xmlStr dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding allowLossyConversion:YES];     NSXMLParser* xmlParse = [[[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithData:data] autorelease];     [xmlParse setDelegate:self];     [xmlParse parse];     return [NSString stringWithFormat:@'%@',resultString]; }  - (void)dealloc {     [resultString release];     [super dealloc]; }  @end