NSString seems to kill unicode characters

Question

I'm using ABPeoplePickerNavigationController to let the user select an address. Everything works just fine in the Simulator. But if an address contains non-ASCII characters like "ü" the result is strange on my device. I have this code:

- (BOOL)peoplePickerNavigationController:(ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *)peoplePicker shouldContinueAfterSelectingPerson:(ABRecordRef)person property:(ABPropertyID)property identifier:(ABMultiValueIdentifier)identifier {

ABMultiValueRef addressesMultiValue = ABRecordCopyValue(person, property);
NSArray *addresses = (__bridge_transfer NSArray*)ABMultiValueCopyArrayOfAllValues(addressesMultiValue);
CFRelease(addressesMultiValue);

NSDictionary *addressData = [addresses objectAtIndex:0];

NSLog(@"%@", addressData);

NSArray *addressKeys = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:(NSString*)kABPersonAddressStreetKey,
                        (NSString*)kABPersonAddressZIPKey,
                        (NSString*)kABPersonAddressCityKey,
                        (NSString*)kABPersonAddressStateKey,
                        (NSString*)kABPersonAddressCountryKey,
                        (NSString*)kABPersonAddressCountryCodeKey, nil];

NSMutableString *address = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];

for (NSString *key in addressKeys) {
    NSString *object = [addressData objectForKey:key];
    if (object) {
        [address appendFormat:@"%@, ", object];
    }
}

NSLog(@"%@", address);

The output for addressData is like this:

{
City = "M\U00fcnchen";
Country = Deutschland;
CountryCode = de;
Street = "Some street";
ZIP = 81000;
}

and the output for address is:

Some street, 81000, M√ºnchen, Deutschland, de,

The correct output for address would be "Some street, 81000, München, Deutschland, de, ". What puzzles me the most is, that \U00fc is the correct Unicode code point for "ü". I have tried many things including printing out every single unichar on its own, but the result doesn't change. Whatever I do when accessing the value in the NSDictionary seems to kill the Unicode character. What can I do to simply get the address correctly?

Thank you very much in advance!

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 01 '12 at 15:27

3

There is nothing wrong with your code or the output. You are displaying it wrong. The letter 'ü' encoded in UTF-8 is 0xC3 0xBC. In the MacRoman character set the byte 0xC3 represents the character '√' and the byte 0xBC represents 'º'. Look at your output as UTF-8 (which it is) and not as MacRoman (which it is not) and you're set.

answered Apr 01 '12 at 15:27

Sven

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Thank you. I didn't think of that because Xcode's debug window displayed strings from the simulator just fine and the geocoder, to which I forward the address to, failed, too. But after rebooting the device the geocoder worked fine and thus it really was just a display issue! – aus Apr 02 '12 at 16:56

Parth Bhatt · Answer 2 · 2012-04-01T15:09:31.507

0

Use NSUTF8StringEncoding to encode your string using method: stringWithUTF8String:.

For example,

NSString *str = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:"your string for encoding"];

As in your case

NSString *object = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:[[addressData objectForKey:key] cStringUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

Or

NSString *object = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:[[addressData objectForKey:key] UTF8String]];

Let me know if you need more help.

Hope this helps.

edited Apr 01 '12 at 15:09

answered Apr 01 '12 at 15:03

Parth Bhatt

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How is this supposed to help? You convert a string to an UTF-8 character array and back to a string, this won't change anything at all. – Sven Apr 01 '12 at 15:19
@Sven: You can refer to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5447413/nsstring-unicode-encoding-problem – Parth Bhatt Apr 01 '12 at 15:21
Thank you for your answer! But as it turned out it really is just a display issue. – aus Apr 02 '12 at 16:58

NSString seems to kill unicode characters

2 Answers2