Passing a _CFNSString into an NSString

Question

I have a loop that identifies elements of a webpage via its HTML and extracts the sections I need. I'm wanting to build an array or (very) long string of the extracted text which can be used later.

The extraction uses TFHpple from GitHub. The problem seems to lie with the extracted text being a _CFNSString, and these don't allow me to transpose them into a NSString or NSMutuableArray.

The code I'm using is:

NSArray *webNodes = [webParser searchWithXPathQuery:tutorialsXpathQueryString];
NSString *extractedText = [[NSString alloc] init];

NSMutableArray *extractedArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:0];
for (TFHppleElement *element in webNodes) {
    Extraction *extraction = [[Extraction alloc] init];
    [extractedArray addObject:extraction];

    extraction.title = [[element firstChild] content];
    extractedText = extraction.title;

    NSLog(@"\n\nTitle: %@", extractedText);
}

The NSLog at this point shows me extractedText holds I'm after for each loop, breaking the code shows extractedText to be a _CFNSString.

If I try adding

text = [text StringByAppendingString extractedText];

(with 'text' being an NSString initialised before the loop) as the last step of the loop I get a null value. Its the same if I try adding text or extraction.title directly into an array.

I found this question Convert NSCFString to NSString but the conversion seems to be going the other way (NSString to CFNSString). When I added equivalent code I got bridging errors and the code doesn't run.

How can I collect the data within extraction.title to build a string or array that can be used later?

What is `text` in the first place? The problem could be that `text` is `nil` at that point producing `nil` as result (remember messages to `nil` are allowed in objc) — Alladinian, Jun 09 '14 at 15:25

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 09 '14 at 15:35

You said you only want a text.

Get it in one line of code for array:

NSArray *extractedArray = [webNodes valueForKeyPath:@"firstChild.content"];

For string:

NSString *extractedText = [webNodes valueForKeyPath:@"firstChild.content"] componentsJoinedByString:@" "];

Passing a _CFNSString into an NSString

1 Answers1