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, Sep 13 '15 at 08:45
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26453711/contentsoffile-returning-nil-possible-cause-swift This guy had a similar error. — Antonio Hernández, Sep 13 '15 at 08:47
would you please mention what version of xcode you are using — Jamil, Sep 13 '15 at 09:12
@AlexLing: NSASCIIStringEncoding cannot represent any non-ASCII characters. So even if it does not crash, NSASCIIStringEncoding is almost always a bad choice. — Martin R, Sep 13 '15 at 09:18

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

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 '17 at 12:25

Community

1
1

answered Sep 13 '15 at 09:06

Martin R

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Thanks for your answer, it works but when I tried another url like https://www.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. – hklel Sep 13 '15 at 09:22
@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. – Martin R Sep 13 '15 at 09:27
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. – GabrielaBezerra Apr 13 '18 at 03:30

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 15 '17 at 15:38

2

Swift 3 Solution:

do {

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

} catch let error {

  print(error)

}

answered Mar 15 '17 at 15:38

Elon R.

131
1
4

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 06 '19 at 19:20

0

Swift 5 Solution:

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

answered May 06 '19 at 19:20

NerdOfCode

215
2
11

Swift get HTML from URL

3 Answers3