Escape characters in a Dictionary before upload - Objective C - ios

Question

My company has an iOS app that interfaces directly with Salesforce, with one major drawback. When a user attempts to upload an illegal character, the app hangs, returns bad values, or results in some other erratic behavior.
I found a really handy piece of code out in the mystical interwebs (thanks, MailDrop), that filters a string and escapes those illegal characters with a forward slash. It then returns the value in a string, ready for upserting/querying.
One thing I'm really having trouble with is getting this to work with our application, though. Our data is stored in a dictionary and is written to in a variety of ways (querying the server, or manual input), and at various times in the application's life cycle. I'm not quite sure how to invoke this nifty 'escapeSosl' in the most efficient method. Is there a way that I can escape these characters every time I write to Core Data? What I'm most afraid of is going through the app and calling this hundreds of times.
Here is the escaping method:
- (NSString *)escapeSosl:(NSString *)src {
// from docs, these are all reserved
NSArray *reserved = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:#"\\", #"&", #"|", #"!", #"{", #"}", #"[", #"]", #"^", #"~", #"*:", #":", #"'" ,#"\"", #"+", #"-", nil];
NSMutableString *s = [NSMutableString stringWithString:src];
NSString *r;
NSEnumerator *e = [reserved objectEnumerator];
while (r = [e nextObject])
[s replaceOccurrencesOfString:r withString:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"\\%#", r] options:NSLiteralSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [s length])];
return s;
}
What I find complicated is the timing of these escapings, and how to apply that to each situation. For instance, the app queries Salesforce for an Account using a location that was either manually entered or found via reverse geocoding. Here is an example of the app requesting data from the Salesforce Server:
-(void)checkServerForLeadMatchingAddressOnAccount:(SFAccount *)account {
currentAccount = account;
//Parse the account location data, removing the last word in the `street` object
NSString *street = account.shippingStreetAddress;
NSMutableArray *streetArray = [[street componentsSeparatedByString:#" "] mutableCopy];
[streetArray removeLastObject];
street = [streetArray componentsJoinedByString:#" "];
street = [street stringByAppendingString:#"_%"];
NSString *city = account.shippingCity;
NSString *state = account.shippingState;
NSString *zip = account.shippingZIP;
//Check for a matching lead on the server. User the callback methods to proceed (either create new data on the server or download to the device
NSLog(#"is connected: %i", self.isConnectedToServer);
if (self.isConnectedToServer){
requestCheckForLead = [[SFRestAPI sharedInstance] requestForQuery:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"SELECT ID, Company, Name, Street, City, State, PostalCode, Phone FROM Lead WHERE PostalCode = '%#' AND Street LIKE '%#' AND City = '%#' AND State = '%#'", zip, street, city, state]];
[[SFRestAPI sharedInstance] send:requestCheckForLead delegate:self];
openTasks++;
} else {
NSLog(#"I can't connect");
[self.serverDelegate serverObjectManager:self communicationSuccessful:NO withResponse:#"Could not connect to the server."];
}
Another area where I might escape characters is right before initiating an upload to the server. There are a couple things that get uploaded, including an Account, the Account's Contact (1:1 rel.), the Account's Opportunity (1:1 rel.), and an Opportunity's Current Service Levels (1:many rel).
Here is an example of the Contact associated with an Account - it uses both Strings and dictionary references, but has some additional logic for parsing firstName from lastName. I'd like to escape the data in a way that I do not need to worry about the timing of these manipulations.
NSMutableDictionary *contactDict = [NSMutableDictionary new];
if (myAccount.contact.email) {
[contactDict setObject:myAccount.contact.email forKey:#"Email"];
} else {
[contactDict setObject:#"" forKey:#"Email"];
}
if (myAccount.contact.name) {
//Split name in two
NSArray *nameArray = [myAccount.contact.name componentsSeparatedByString:#" "];
NSString *firstName = [nameArray objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *lastName = [nameArray lastObject];
[contactDict setObject:firstName forKey:#"firstName"];
[contactDict setObject:lastName forKey:#"lastName"];
} else {
[contactDict setObject:#"" forKey:#"firstName"];
[contactDict setObject:#"" forKey:#"lastName"];
}
if (myAccount.contact.phone){
[contactDict setObject:myAccount.contact.phone forKey:#"Phone"];
} else {
[contactDict setObject:#"" forKey:#"Phone"];
}
updateContactRequest = [[SFRestAPI sharedInstance] requestForUpdateWithObjectType:#"Contact" objectId:myAccount.createdContactID fields:contactDict];
[[SFRestAPI sharedInstance] send:updateContactRequest delegate:self];
So this may seem like a bit of a large question, but does anyone have some pointers as to how I could escape characters in these various dictionaries, using something similar to the 'escapeSosl' code I included above, whenever things are written to core data?

Answer 1

In this line you build your query
requestCheckForLead = [[SFRestAPI sharedInstance] requestForQuery:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"SELECT ID, Company, Name, Street, City, State, PostalCode, Phone FROM Lead WHERE PostalCode = '%#' AND Street LIKE '%#' AND City = '%#' AND State = '%#'", zip, street, city, state]];
instead of passing street as the parameter pass [self escapeSosl:street] and so on for the other params.