How does one append something like "?x=123" to an NSURL? - ios

Question

I have an NSURL of the form
"http://abc.def.com:1234/stuff/"
and I want to append to it so the final url is like this
"http://abc.def.com:1234/stuff/?x=123".
But if I do this
url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://abc.def.com:1234/stuff/?"];
url = [url URLByAppendingPathComponent:#"x=123"];
Then the result is
http://abc.def.com:1234/stuff/x=123?
(its the same result if URLByAppendingPathExtension is used).
But if I do this
url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://abc.def.com:1234/stuff/?"];
url = [url URLByAppendingPathComponent:#"x=123"];
Then the result is
http://abc.def.com:1234/stuff/%3Fx=123
(also the same result if URLByAppendingPathExtension is used).
Neither of which is what I am after. How do I get a final result of "http://abc.def.com:1234/stuff/?x=123" ?

Answer 1

I think the simplest answer here is to create a new URL using the old one as the base URL.
url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"?x=123" relativeToURL:url]
Here is a unit test that checks the logic
- (void)testCreatingQueryURLfromBaseURL
{
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://foo.com/bar/baz"];
url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"?x=1&y=2&z=3" relativeToURL:url];
STAssertEqualObjects([url absoluteString], #"http://foo.com/bar/baz?x=1&y=2&z=3", nil);
}

Answer 2

Create your actual NSURL object last, from an NSString that you build up as needed:
NSString *urlString = #"http://www.site.com/";
if (some condition)
urlString = [urlString stringByAppendingString:#"?x=123"];
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:urlString];