Swift - encode URL

Question

If I encode a string like this:

var escapedString = originalString.stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)

it does

Answer 1

Swift 4 & 5 (Thanks @sumizome for suggestion. Thanks @FD_ and @derickito for testing)

var allowedQueryParamAndKey = NSCharacterSet.urlQueryAllowed
allowedQueryParamAndKey.remove(charactersIn: ";/?:@&=+$, ")
paramOrKey.addingPercentEncoding(withAllowedCharacters: allowedQueryParamAndKey)

Swift 3

let allowedQueryParamAndKey =  NSCharacterSet.urlQueryAllowed.remove(charactersIn: ";/?:@&=+$, ")
paramOrKey.addingPercentEncoding(withAllowedCharacters: allowedQueryParamAndKey)

Swift 2.2 (Borrowing from Zaph's and correcting for url query key and parameter values)

var allowedQueryParamAndKey =  NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: ";/?:@&=+$, ").invertedSet
paramOrKey.stringByAddingPercentEncodingWithAllowedCharacters(allowedQueryParamAndKey)

Example:

let paramOrKey = "https://some.website.com/path/to/page.srf?a=1&b=2#top"
paramOrKey.addingPercentEncoding(withAllowedCharacters: allowedQueryParamAndKey)
// produces:
"https%3A%2F%2Fsome.website.com%2Fpath%2Fto%2Fpage.srf%3Fa%3D1%26b%3D2%23top"

This is a shorter version of Bryan Chen's answer. I'd guess that urlQueryAllowed is allowing the control characters through which is fine unless they form part of the key or value in your query string at which point they need to be escaped.