Encoding Swift string as escaped unicode?

Question

The API data field only supports ASCII encoding -- but I need to support Unicode (emoji, foreign characters, etc.)

I\'d like to encode the user\'s text input as an e

Answer 1

You can use reduce in your collection and check if each character isASCII, if true return that character otherwise convert the special character to unicode:

Swift 5.1 • Xcode 11

extension Unicode.Scalar {
    var hexa: String { .init(value, radix: 16, uppercase: true) }
}

---

extension Character {
    var hexaValues: [String] {
        unicodeScalars
            .map(\.hexa)
            .map { #"\\U"# + repeatElement("0", count: 8-$0.count) + $0 }
    }
}

---

extension StringProtocol where Self: RangeReplaceableCollection {
    var asciiRepresentation: String { map { $0.isASCII ? .init($0) : $0.hexaValues.joined() }.joined() }
}

---

let textContainingUnicode = """
Let's go