iPhone NSXMLParser (Error 9)

Question

Hi, i try to parse within my iPhone SDK 4

http://de.news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=iphone&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt

there are some german umlaute

<description><![CDATA[Mehr als die Hälfte der Belegschaft des weltweit größten]]></description>

As I read in another forum as long they are wrapped in CDATA it should be fine.

But in the moment the parser found the element "description" he breaks with:

error parsing XML: Unable to download story feed from web site (Error code 9 ) http://de.news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=iphone&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt

The english feeds works fine !? So its something with this umlaute, but what can i do?

greets chris

JUST FOR UNDERSTANDING .. HERE MY WHOLE PARSER

- (void)parseXMLFileAtURL:(NSString *)URL { 
    aktuelleUrl = URL;
    stories = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
    NSURL *xmlURL = [NSURL URLWithString:aktuelleUrl];

// here, for some reason you have to use NSClassFromString when trying to alloc NSXMLParser, otherwise you will get an object not found error
// this may be necessary only for the toolchain
rssParser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:xmlURL];

// Set self as the delegate of the parser so that it will receive the parser delegate methods callbacks.
[rssParser setDelegate:self];

// Depending on the XML document you're parsing, you may want to enable these features of NSXMLParser.
[rssParser setShouldProcessNamespaces:NO];
[rssParser setShouldReportNamespacePrefixes:NO];
[rssParser setShouldResolveExternalEntities:NO];    
[rssParser parse];

}
- (void)parserDidStartDocument:(NSXMLParser *)parser{   
//NSLog(@"found file and started parsing");

}
- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser parseErrorOccurred:(NSError *)parseError {
NSString * errorString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Unable to download story feed from web site (Error code %i ) %@", [parseError code], aktuelleUrl];
NSLog(@"error parsing XML: %@", errorString);

}



- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didStartElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName attributes:(NSDictionary *)attributeDict{            
NSLog(@"found this element: %@", elementName);
currentElement = [elementName copy];

if ([elementName isEqualToString:@"channel"]) {
    channel1item2 = 1;
    // clear out our story item caches...
    //  item = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
    currentTitle = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
    //  currentDate = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
    currentSummary = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
    currentLink = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
}

if ([elementName isEqualToString:@"item"]) {
    channel1item2 = 2;
    // clear out our story item caches...
    item = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
    currentTitle = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
    currentDate = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
    currentSummary = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
    currentLink = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
    currentEncoded = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];

    }   
    }
     - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didEndElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName{     
//NSLog(@"ended element: %@ c1i2: %i", elementName, channel1item2);

if (channel1item2 == 1) {
    if (![currentTitle isEqualToString:@""]) { aCurrentTitle = currentTitle;  }
    if (![currentLink isEqualToString:@""])  { aCurrentLink = currentLink; }
    if (![currentSummary isEqualToString:@""])  {aCurrentSummary = currentSummary; }
}
else if ([elementName isEqualToString:@"item"]) {
    [item setObject:currentTitle forKey:@"title"];
    [item setObject:currentLink forKey:@"link"];
    [item setObject:currentSummary forKey:@"summary"];
    [item setObject:currentDate forKey:@"date"];
    [item setObject:currentEncoded forKey:@"content:encoded"];      
    [stories addObject:[item copy]];
}   
}
- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string{
//NSLog(@"found characters: %@", string);
// save the characters for the current item...
if ([currentElement isEqualToString:@"title"]) {
    [currentTitle appendString:string];
} else if ([currentElement isEqualToString:@"link"]) {
    [currentLink appendString:string];
    //NSLog(@"parselink '%@'",string);
} else if ([currentElement isEqualToString:@"description"]) {
    [currentSummary appendString:string];
} else if ([currentElement isEqualToString:@"pubDate"]) {
    [currentDate appendString:string];
} else if ([currentElement isEqualToString:@"content:encoded"]) {
    [currentEncoded appendString:string];
}
else if ([currentElement isEqualToString:@"media:content"]) {
    //NSLog(@"mediacontent %@",string);
}   
}
- (void)parserDidEndDocument:(NSXMLParser *)parser {

// NSLog(@"all done!");
//NSLog(@"stories array has %d items", [stories count]);
}

Answer 1

From the documentation:

NSXMLParserInvalidCharacterError = 9

Perhaps the document is not really encoded in UTF-8?

Answer 2

Perhaps look into -stringWithContentsOfURL:usedEncoding:error: to download the XML:

NSError *error = nil;
NSStringEncoding encoding;
NSString *xmlFeedStr = [NSString stringWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://de.news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=iphone&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt"] usedEncoding:&encoding error:&error];
NSXMLParser *rssParser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithData:[xmlFeedStr dataUsingEncoding:encoding allowLossyConversion:YES]];
...
[rssParser release];

Answer 3

Now I solved it different. Wrote my own XML parser just simple for my needs and with the following routine, i found in some forum, i encode the xml string. Also I marked the answer above as 'accepted' as it lead me into the right direction.

- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)s {
[resultString appendString:s];
}
- (NSString*)convertEntiesInString:(NSString*)s {
resultString = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];

if(s == nil) {
    //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];
[xmlParse setDelegate:self];
[xmlParse parse];
NSString* returnStr = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%@",resultString];

return returnStr;
}




objectsResultStr = [self convertEntiesInString:orgString]];