NSMutableURLRequest sending null value on device but works in browser - ios

Question

Before you read this please keep in mind that I am an Objective C programmer trying to help debug a server problem with a C# programmer who knows nothing about what I do.
I am sending a SOAP packet to a .net/c# side and the server receives nulls for the variables. When the url and variable string is put in the browser I get the proper response.
The post logs out to "?help=1& email=test#email.net & password=testpassword" but i keep getting "Result=Error&Details=Object reference not set to an instance of an object." back for my return string.
NSString *post = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"?help=1& email=? & password=%#",userEmail, userPassword];
NSData *postData = [post dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding allowLossyConversion:YES];
NSString *postLength = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%d",[postData length]];
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc]init];
[request setURL:[NSURL URLWithString:LOGIN_SERVICE]];
[request setHTTPMethod:#"POST"];
[request setValue:postLength forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Length"];
[request setValue:#"multipart/form-data" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Type"];
[request setHTTPBody:postData];
//Submit the Post:
[NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:nil error:nil];
/NSData *returnData = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:nil error:nil];
//Extract Return:
NSString *returnString = [[NSString alloc]initWithData:returnData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

Answer 1

Your email variable within the format string wasnt being populated. And also, why do you have spaces in your post data? I imagine this is causing your issues. Because your data can contain spaces, you'll need to escape them.
Instead of:
NSString *post = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"?help=1& email=? & password=%#",userEmail, userPassword];
Try:
NSString* escapedUserEmail = [userEmail stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
NSString* escapedUserPassword = [userPassword stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
NSString *post = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"?help=1&email=%#&password=%#",escapedUserEmail, escapedUserPassword];
For more reading on the topic, refer to: http://deusty.blogspot.com/2006/11/sending-http-get-and-post-from-cocoa.html