URL from string with spaces in it

You should escape the spaces. To do that, you can either change the spaces to "%20" or "+".

You should look at the NSURLComponents API, which lets you build a URL from its component parts. It will take care of the nightmare that is URL quoting. For example:

import Foundation

let uc = NSURLComponents()
uc.scheme = "http"
uc.host = "query.yahooapis.com"
uc.path = "/v1/public/yql"
uc.queryItems = [
    NSURLQueryItem(name: "q", value: "select * from yahoo.finance.quote where symbol in (\"AAPL\")"),
    NSURLQueryItem(name: "format", value: "json"),
    NSURLQueryItem(name: "env", value: "http://datatables.org/alltables.env")
]
print(uc.URL!.absoluteString)

This prints:

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20yahoo.finance.quote%20where%20symbol%20in%20(%22AAPL%22)&format=json&env=http://datatables.org/alltables.env

You can shrink the code by starting with a known, good, no-quoting-required URL string:

import Foundation

let uc = NSURLComponents(string: "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql")!
uc.queryItems = … continue as above …

In related, what must I do re the Apple Transport policy to make this secure?

That really depends on the service provider; you’ll have to ask them if they vend the service via HTTPS. If they don’t, accessing the service securely is going to be a challenge. The only reasonable secure option is for you to create your own front end to the service that supports HTTPS. Your app can then talk to your front end securely using HTTPS, which can then talk to the original service via HTTP, making sure to not pass along any identifying information.

The insecure alternatively is to add an ATS exception dictionary to your app.

<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
<dict>
    <key>NSExceptionDomains</key>
    <dict>
        <key>query.yahooapis.com</key>
        <dict>
            <key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
            <true/>
        </dict>
    </dict>
</dict>

WARNING This won’t make your networking secure, it’ll just stop ATS complaining about its insecurity.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn "The Eskimo!"
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

Is there any improvement on this? I'm getting errors in a Swift script if a filepath uses spaces. (The filepath gets converted to a URL.)

I've got a workaround:

myURL = NSURL.fileURL(withPath: myString)

(Apple's docs say to use fileURLWithPath, but that's deprecated.)

Then I have to use "myURL as URL" to force a type conversion, even though I thought they are supposed to be "toll-free".

IS there a better way?

IS there a better way?

The droid you’re looking for here is

URL(fileURLWithPath:)

let u = URL(fileURLWithPath: "/Users/quinn/Web Staging")
print(u)        // prints "file:///Users/quinn/Web%20Staging/"

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

I thought I had tried that, and Xcode told me not to use it. It might be possible I'm confusing NSURL with CFURL and URL, of course!

Thanks.