Content loss from JSON file when fetching it from server - ios

Question

I have an API and I want to fetch some data from it as a JSON file using POST request.
The problem is :
data on the server look like this:
{
"countryID":"30"
"countryName":"Syria"
},
data I received from the http request -before parsing- is :
{
"countryID":"30"
"countryName":""
},
there is no value for every text field like countryName .
the http request is :
‫NSString * post =[NSString stringWithFormat:#"lang=%#",#"English"];
NSData *postData = [post dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding allowLossyConversion:YES];
NSString *postLength = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%d", [postData length]];
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init];
[request setTimeoutInterval:60];
[request setURL:url];
[request setHTTPMethod:#"POST"];
[request setValue:postLength forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Length"];
[request setValue:#"application/x-www-form-urlencoded" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Type"];
[request setHTTPBody:postData];
NSURLConnection* connection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];
[connection start];‬
the last thing I want to mention that the received JSON file contains a header before the JSON data like this :
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
My Question
Is there any mistake in the HTTP request causing this problem? or it's server side problem?
Edit
I forgot to mention that the server is a PHP server and the url format of the request is as look like :
https://website.com/api/data.php

Answer 1

It looks like the response you're getting has two problems: it doesn't have the content you expect, and its format is off - it sounds like the HTTP body of the response has both HTML and JSON in it.
The first problem is some sort of application-level issue; either you're not sending the right query, or the server isn't interpreting it correctly, or it has some sort of other bug. So it could be on either side.
The second problem, though, is probably a server-side issue; it's not returning a coherent response. That said, you might be able to prod the server to do the right thing by telling it explicitly that you want a JSON response:
[request setValue:#"application/json" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Accept"];
Depends on the server, though. Good luck!

Answer 2

Are you getting any json errors in the debugger, like the Garbage At End error? Are you using NSJSONSerialization to handle the JSON on the iOS end? What happens if you use the NSJSONReadingAllowFragments option of NSJSONSerialization?
I'd have posted this as a comment but I'm underprivileged. :(