Weird strings when I use .ascii encoding to decode an HTML page

Question

I am trying to parse html from a URL:

func fetch(url: URL, completion: @escaping ((Result) -> Void)) {
    var request = URLRequest(url: url)
    request.httpMethod = "GET"
    let session = URLSession.init(configuration: URLSessionConfiguration.default)
    session.dataTask(with: request) { [weak self] data, _, error in
        guard let self = self else { return }
        
        if let error = error {
            completion(.failure(error))
            return
        }
        
        if let data = data, let html = String(data: data, encoding: .ascii) {
            completion(.success(self.metaTagsDictionary(for: html)))
            return
        } else {
            completion(.failure(ParseError.fail))
            return
        }
    }.resume()
}

I then print the result with:

dict.keys.forEach { print(dict[$0]) }

However I seem to be getting a bunch of weird characters in the string e.g:

å‘½ï¼Œç§‘ç§‘éƒ½èƒ½å•ï¼ä¾†è©¦è©¦ 2020 å¹´å•†å‘¨å ±å°Žçš„æœ€æ–°å®¶æ•™æ¨¡å¼å§ã€‚") any idea what this is? Am I using the wrong encoding?

You can get the text encoding name from the response stackoverflow.com/a/34687962/2303865 — Leo Dabus
– Leo Dabus, Commented Aug 21, 2020 at 17:17

Rob Napier · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-21 16:46:28Z

3

You're decoding in .ascii which is almost certainly not correct for this data. Most web pages are encoded in UTF-8 (.utf8), but there are other options. It depends on the site. But I would start with UTF-8. If that returns nil, then you will need to investigate the site and determine what encoding it uses.

answered Aug 21, 2020 at 16:46

Rob Napier

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1 Comment

Kex Over a year ago

Thanks for this! Working (for this page anyway)

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