stringWithContentsOfURL not working with certain string

Question

Hello,

I have code similar to the following with a URL like this... If I use the first *url, webpage will return null. If I put this URL into a URL shortening system like bit.ly it does work and returns the pages HTML as a string. I can only think I have invalid characters in my first *url? Any ideas?

NSString *url =@"http://www.testurl.com/testing/testapp.aspx/app.detail/params.frames.y.tpl.uk.item.1.cm_scid.TB-test/left.html.|metadrill,html/walk.yah.ukHB?cm_re=LN-_-OnNow-_-TestOne";

//above *url does not work, one below does
NSURL *url =[NSURL URLWithString: @"http://bit.ly/shortened"];
NSString *webpage = [NSString stringWithContentsOfURL:url];

Answer 1

You probably need to escape some characters in the first URL, as follows:

NSString *url =@"http://www.testurl.com/testing/testapp.aspx/app.detail/params.frames.y.tpl.uk.item.1.cm_scid.TB-test/left.html.|metadrill,html/walk.yah.ukHB?cm_re=LN-_-OnNow-_-TestOne";
NSString *escapedURL = [url stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
NSString *webpage = [NSString stringWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:escapedURL]];

The construction of the URL and its fetch will fail if the URL contains characters that aren't escaped properly (looking at your URL, it's probably the pipe (|), question mark, or underscore).