HTML character decoding in Objective-C / Cocoa Touch

Question

First of all, I found this: Objective C HTML escape/unescape, but it doesn\'t work for me.

My encoded characters (come from a RSS feed, btw) look like this: &a

Answer 1

As of iOS 7, you can decode HTML characters natively by using an NSAttributedString with the NSHTMLTextDocumentType attribute:

NSString *htmlString = @" & & < > ™ © ♥ ♣ ♠ ♦";
NSData *stringData = [htmlString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

NSDictionary *options = @{NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute:NSHTMLTextDocumentType};
NSAttributedString *decodedString;
decodedString = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithData:stringData
                                                 options:options
                                      documentAttributes:NULL
                                                   error:NULL];

The decoded attributed string will now be displayed as:  & & < > ™ © ♥ ♣ ♠ ♦.

Note: This will only work if called on the main thread.