I have an outdated application which use to download an XML document and parse it on the iPhone app, I used the NSURLConnection for that purpose:
NSURLConnection
-(
AFXMLRequestOperation is explicitly intended to be used to return you an NSXMLDocument instance, NOT a raw XML string.
AFXMLRequestOperation
NSXMLDocument
If you want the XML string use AFURLConnectionOperation and build the NSMutableString the same way you do with NSURLConnection.
AFURLConnectionOperation
NSMutableString