JSON data in http body contains special characters in my simple case - ios

Question

I have a very simple model struct Student which only has two properties firstName and lastName:
struct Student {
let firstName: String
let lastName: String
init(_ firstName: String, _ lastName: String) {
self.firstName = firstName
self.lastName = lastName
}
// Convert to json data
func toData() -> Data? {
var json = [String: Any]()
let mirror = Mirror(reflecting: self)
for child in mirror.children {
if let key = child.label?.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespacesAndNewlines) {
json[key] = child.value
}
}
do {
return try JSONSerialization.data(withJSONObject: json, options: [])
} catch {
print("\(error.localizedDescription)")
}
return nil
}
}
As you see above, I created an toData() function which I use to convert model object to JSON data for my HTTP request body.
I create Student instance by:
let student = Student("John", "Smith")
I got Json Data by:
let jsonData = student.toData()
later I set to my URLRequest body by:
request.httpBody = jsonData!
However, backend team always see :
{\"firstName\":\"John\", \"lastName\":\"Smith\"}
But backend expect:
{"firstName":"John", "lastName":"Smith"}
I am sure it is not backend problem. Looks like something needs to improve in my toData() function. But I don't know what to do. Could someone help me?

Answer 1

Try this :
if let jsonString:String = String(data: jsonData!, encoding: String.Encoding.utf8) {
request.httpBody = jsonString.data(using: String.Encoding.utf8)
}

Answer 2

You can get rid of the extra backslashes by converting your struct to a dictionary manually.
I have tested below method using a dummy rest server (rest-server-dummy from npm) and there are no extra backslashes around the "" characters.
struct Student {
let firstName: String
let lastName: String
init(_ firstName: String, _ lastName: String) {
self.firstName = firstName
self.lastName = lastName
}
// Convert to json data
func toData() -> Data? {
var json = [String: Any]()
json["firstName"] = firstName
json["lastname"] = lastName
do {
return try JSONSerialization.data(withJSONObject: json, options: [])
} catch {
print("\(error.localizedDescription)")
}
return nil
}
}
I used this method to send the data to the dummy server running on localhost:
var request = URLRequest(url:URL(string: "http://localhost:8080/username")!)
request.httpMethod = "POST"
request.httpBody = student.toData()
URLSession.shared.dataTask(with: request, completionHandler: { data, response, error in
data
response
error
}).resume()
The contents of the output from the server log:
{
"lastname": "Smith",
"firstName": "John"
}