Objective C URL with Vertical pipes/bars - ios

Question

I am trying to have vertical pipes in the URL
Input String: http://testURL.com/Control?command=dispatch|HOME|ABC:User Name
-(NSString *)getURLEncodedString:(NSString *)stringvalue{
NSMutableString *output = [NSMutableString string];
const unsigned char *source = (const unsigned char *)[stringvalue UTF8String];
int sourceLen = strlen((const char *)source);
for (int i = 0; i < sourceLen; ++i) {
const unsigned char thisChar = source[i];
if (thisChar == ':' || thisChar == '/' || thisChar == '?' || thisChar == '=' || thisChar == '|' || thisChar == '.' || thisChar == '-' || thisChar == '_' || thisChar == '~' ||
(thisChar >= 'a' && thisChar <= 'z') ||
(thisChar >= 'A' && thisChar <= 'Z') ||
(thisChar >= '0' && thisChar <= '9')) {
[output appendFormat:#"%c", thisChar];
} else {
[output appendFormat:#"%%%02X", thisChar];
}
}
return output;
}
Output String after calling above method: http://testURL.com/Control?command=dispatch|HOME|ABC:User%20Name
Now, if I pass the above encode string to [[NSURL URLWithString:encodedString];
I am getting Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1000 "bad URL" UserInfo=0xae9d760 {NSUnderlyingError=0xaec8ed0 "bad URL", NSLocalizedDescription=bad URL}
Any input on this guys? I want the URL to look like the encodedString.
Thank you!

Answer 1

I really cannot see a reason to encode/escape your string manually... Any way, this will work just fine:
NSString *urlString = #"http://testURL.com/Control?command=dispatch|HOME|ABC:User Name";
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:[urlString stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
Which outputs:
http://testURL.com/Control?command=dispatch%7CHOME%7CABC:User%20Name
It seems that NSURL doesn't like vertical bars after all, which you didn't encode in your method and thus getting a bad URL code.