On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 6:25 PM, Joe Turner <joetur...@me.com> wrote: > I'm having an issue with NSPropertyListSerialization, where I will call > dataWithPropertyList:format:options:error:, to get the data from a property > list–this part goes fine. However, then I need the data as a string, so I can > upload it to a web service. However, when I call initWithData:encoding: to > get a string (I'm using NSASCIIStringEncoding, but have tried many others as > well), wherever there was a letter with an accent, weird stuff happens. Like > é turns into Ä. I'm fine with losing accents, but right now, I can't even > seem to do that–I just get the Ä's. Is there any way I can use a different > encoding or something else to keep the accents for the time being, and then > filter them out when I create the post data with > dataUsingEncoding:allowLossyConversion:?
There are two potential encoding mismatches here: 1) The encoding of the serialized plist vs. the encoding you pass to -initWithData:encoding: 2) The encoding of the data you send to the web service vs. the encoding the service is expecting to receive You need to make sure that both of these situations are handled correctly. As James says, the "standard" (more accurately, "assumed by default") encoding of XML is UTF-8. But you can do even better than that, if you like, since the only logical choice for plist format in this case is XML: you can check the encoding of the serialized plist by creating an NSXMLDocument out of it and asking for its -characterEncoding. While I doubt that NSPropertyListSerialization is ever going to start emitting XML documents that are not UTF-8 encoded, this is the most correct approach. Either way, that gives you the answer for what encoding you should be passing -initWithData:encoding:. But I'm kind of curious why you're bothering to convert it to a string in the first place, since it can't possibly be of any benefit to you. NSString's internal representation is UTF-16 anyway, so the first thing -initWithData:encoding: is going to do is convert your XML document (with its encoding="utf-8" header!) into UTF-16. Then at some point down the line you'll need to ask for the data back in UTF-8 format, or else you'll wind up with a lying encoding directive. Long story short, it sounds like you're abusing NSString. Data are not the strings, and strings are not data; Cocoa is designed to keep the two concepts separate. --Kyle Sluder _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
