Swift - encode URL

Question

If I encode a string like this:

var escapedString = originalString.stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)

it does

Answer 1

You can use URLComponents to avoid having to manually percent encode your query string:

let scheme = "https"
let host = "www.google.com"
let path = "/search"
let queryItem = URLQueryItem(name: "q", value: "Formula One")


var urlComponents = URLComponents()
urlComponents.scheme = scheme
urlComponents.host = host
urlComponents.path = path
urlComponents.queryItems = [queryItem]

if let url = urlComponents.url {
    print(url)   // "https://www.google.com/search?q=Formula%20One"
}

---

extension URLComponents {
    init(scheme: String = "https",
         host: String = "www.google.com",
         path: String = "/search",
         queryItems: [URLQueryItem]) {
        self.init()
        self.scheme = scheme
        self.host = host
        self.path = path
        self.queryItems = queryItems
    }
}

---

let query = "Formula One"
if let url = URLComponents(queryItems: [URLQueryItem(name: "q", value: query)]).url {
    print(url)  // https://www.google.com/search?q=Formula%20One
}