iOS - build email URL without parsing - ios

Question

I want to build an email URL using some class (NSURL or similar) BUT I do not want the overhead of parsing a string. I want to be able to specify the scheme (mailto in this case) and the address (someone#somewhere.com in this case.)
I've tried this code:
NSString *address = #"someone#somewhere.com";
NSString *scheme = #"mailto";
NSURL *url = [[NSURL alloc] initWithScheme:scheme host:address path:#"/"];
NSLog(#"test2: %#", [url absoluteString]);
but it outputs:
mailto://someone#somewhere.com/
which isn't even a valid email URL.
What are my options?
p.s. please don't suggest using NSDataDetector because it is even more expensive than the usual kind of string parsing.

Answer 1

Assuming you do have purely the email address and no other paraphernalia, the solution is simple:
- (NSURL *)mailtoURLWithEmailAddress:(NSString *)address;
{
address = [address stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSURL *result = [NSURL URLWithString:[#"mailto:" stringByAppendingString:address]];
return result;
}
Adding percent escapes is important should there be any chance that somebody might specify an address outside of the ASCII characters, or include one of the reserved URL characters.
For a more capable solution, see KSMailtoURLs in my KSFileUtilities repository. It adds:
Handling of strings that include the recipient's name, as well as address
Encoding of email subject line etc.