iPhone, special characters in JSON Response

Question

Writing an iphone app, and I'm getting my data from a REST API that returns JSON. My problem is, some of the data has special characters embedded and Im getting errors. Example:

MartÌn
Petite-RiviËre-Saint-FranÁois

Here is my current code:

NSString *jsonString = [[NSString alloc] 
                            initWithData:receivedData 
                            encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSMutableArray *tempResults = [[[jsonString JSONValue] 
                            objectForKey:@"getRegionResortsLastUpdatedResponse"] 
                            objectForKey:@"return"];

Whenever the data has special characters in it "jsonString" return "(null)", otherwise everything works fine.

Is this something I can handle on my end, or does the API need to be modified to output the character codes?

Answer 1

If -initWithData:encoding: returns nil, your data is almost certainly not encoded in the requested encoding. I suspect you're not sending UTF8, and are rather sending some other encoding such as one of the Windows code pages or Latin1. See String Encoding in the NSString documentation.

Answer 2

smacks self on forehead

That did it, thanks!

Answer 3

i have a similar problem...however, for me it is not a question of nil. Instead, i get results like "Liu00e8ge" instead of "Liège"...my json header is configured to render utf8, as is the DB (DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8). In HTML, these characters render fine, but in my UILabel, i get the utf8 code. Here is how i retreive my data:

NSString *feedURL = @"http://site.local/places/view/740";
NSLog(@"---------> SENDING QUERRY : %@",feedURL);

NSData * contentsData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:feedURL]];
NSString *contents;
if (contentsData) 
{
    contents = [[NSString alloc] initWithData: contentsData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
}
NSLog(@"contents %@",contents);//funny characters still there
NSDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithDictionary:[contents JSONValue]];
mylabel.text = [dict valueForKeyPath:@"Place.name"];

any ideas? i have a lot of these characters!

thanks