Swift get HTML from URL

Question

I am trying to get and print the HTML from a URL. Here's how I do it (with Swift 2):

let testUrl = NSURL(string: "https://www.google.com")
var html = NSString()
do {
    html = try NSString(contentsOfURL: testUrl!, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding)
} catch{print(error)}
print(html)

And the following error is printed in console:

Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=261 "The file couldn’t be opened using text encoding Unicode (UTF-8)." UserInfo={NSURL=https://www.google.com, NSStringEncoding=4}

Any idea?

oh nvm, changing encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding to encoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding solve it :) — hklel
– hklel, Commented Sep 13, 2015 at 8:45
stackoverflow.com/questions/26453711/… This guy had a similar error. — Antonio Hernández
– Antonio Hernández, Commented Sep 13, 2015 at 8:47
would you please mention what version of xcode you are using — Jamil
– Jamil, Commented Sep 13, 2015 at 9:12
@AlexLing: NSASCIIStringEncoding cannot represent any non-ASCII characters. So even if it does not crash, NSASCIIStringEncoding is almost always a bad choice. — Martin R
– Martin R, Commented Sep 13, 2015 at 9:18

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:25:26Z

7

It seems that www.google.com sends the response using the ISO 8859-1 encoding, the corresponding NSString encoding is NSISOLatin1StringEncoding:

html = try NSString(contentsOfURL: testUrl!, encoding: NSISOLatin1StringEncoding)

You can also detect the HTTP response encoding automatically, see for example https://stackoverflow.com/a/32051684/1187415.

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:25

CommunityBot

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answered Sep 13, 2015 at 9:06

Martin R

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3 Comments

hklel Over a year ago

Thanks for your answer, it works but when I tried another url like google.com/search?q=%20site:%20stackoverflow.com I got an error saying that The file “search” couldn’t be opened. I've tried different encodings but none of them work.

Martin R Over a year ago

@AlexLing: let testUrl = NSURL(string: "https://www.google.com/search?q=%20site:%20stackoverflow.com") with the NSISOLatin1StringEncoding does work for me. The error message "The file “search” couldn’t be opened" seems to be unrelated to the encoding to me.

GabrielaBezerra Over a year ago

Saved my life!!!! I was trying to download a .svg image as String and persisting it for showing in a WKWebView, even if the user is offline. This finally solved the issue.

Elon R. · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-15 15:38:00Z

2

Swift 3 Solution:

do {

html = try NSString(contentsOf: url, encoding: String.Encoding.isoLatin1.rawValue)

} catch let error {

  print(error)

}

answered Mar 15, 2017 at 15:38

Elon R.

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Comments

NerdOfCode · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-06 19:20:13Z

0

Swift 5 Solution:

try! String(contentsOf: URL(string: "https://www.google.com"), encoding: .utf16)

answered May 6, 2019 at 19:20

NerdOfCode

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