Swift GET request with parameters
I'm very new to swift, so I will probably have a lot of faults in my code but what I'm trying to achieve is send a GET
request to a localhost server with paramters. More so I'm trying to achieve it given my function take two parameters baseURL:string,params:NSDictionary
. I am not sure how to combine those two into the actual URLRequest ? Here is what I have tried so far
func sendRequest(url:String,params:NSDictionary){
let urls: NSURL! = NSURL(string:url)
var request = NSMutableURLRequest(URL:urls)
request.HTTPMethod = "GET"
var data:NSData! = NSKeyedArchiver.archivedDataWithRootObject(params)
request.HTTPBody = data
println(request)
var session = NSURLSession.sharedSession()
var task = session.dataTaskWithRequest(request, completionHandler:loadedData)
task.resume()
}
}
func loadedData(data:NSData!,response:NSURLResponse!,err:NSError!){
if(err != nil){
println(err?.description)
}else{
var jsonResult: NSDictionary = NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData(data, options: NSJSONReadingOptions.MutableContainers, error: nil) as NSDictionary
println(jsonResult)
}
}
When building a GET
request, there is no body to the request, but rather everything goes on the URL. To build a URL (and properly percent escaping it), you can also use URLComponents
.
var url = URLComponents(string: "https://www.google.com/search/")!
url.queryItems = [
URLQueryItem(name: "q", value: "War & Peace")
]
The only trick is that most web services need +
character percent escaped (because they'll interpret that as a space character as dictated by the application/x-www-form-urlencoded
specification). But URLComponents
will not percent escape it. Apple contends that +
is a valid character in a query and therefore shouldn't be escaped. Technically, they are correct, that it is allowed in a query of a URI, but it has a special meaning in application/x-www-form-urlencoded
requests and really should not be passed unescaped.
Apple acknowledges that we have to percent escaping the +
characters, but advises that we do it manually:
var url = URLComponents(string: "https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/")!
url.queryItems = [
URLQueryItem(name: "i", value: "1+2")
]
url.percentEncodedQuery = url.percentEncodedQuery?.replacingOccurrences(of: "+", with: "%2B")
This is an inelegant work-around, but it works, and is what Apple advises if your queries may include a +
character and you have a server that interprets them as spaces.
So, combining that with your sendRequest
routine, you end up with something like:
func sendRequest(_ url: String, parameters: [String: String], completion: @escaping ([String: Any]?, Error?) -> Void) {
var components = URLComponents(string: url)!
components.queryItems = parameters.map { (key, value) in
URLQueryItem(name: key, value: value)
}
components.percentEncodedQuery = components.percentEncodedQuery?.replacingOccurrences(of: "+", with: "%2B")
let request = URLRequest(url: components.url!)
let task = URLSession.shared.dataTask(with: request) { data, response, error in
guard
let data = data, // is there data
let response = response as? HTTPURLResponse, // is there HTTP response
200 ..< 300 ~= response.statusCode, // is statusCode 2XX
error == nil // was there no error
else {
completion(nil, error)
return
}
let responseObject = (try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data)) as? [String: Any]
completion(responseObject, nil)
}
task.resume()
}
And you'd call it like:
sendRequest("someurl", parameters: ["foo": "bar"]) { responseObject, error in
guard let responseObject = responseObject, error == nil else {
print(error ?? "Unknown error")
return
}
// use `responseObject` here
}
Personally, I'd use JSONDecoder
nowadays and return a custom struct
rather than a dictionary, but that's not really relevant here. Hopefully this illustrates the basic idea of how to percent encode the parameters into the URL of a GET request.
See previous revision of this answer for Swift 2 and manual percent escaping renditions.
Use NSURLComponents to build your NSURL like this
var urlComponents = NSURLComponents(string: "https://www.google.de/maps/")!
urlComponents.queryItems = [
NSURLQueryItem(name: "q", value: String(51.500833)+","+String(-0.141944)),
NSURLQueryItem(name: "z", value: String(6))
]
urlComponents.URL // returns https://www.google.de/maps/?q=51.500833,-0.141944&z=6
font: https://www.ralfebert.de/snippets/ios/encoding-nsurl-get-parameters/
I am using this, try it in playground. Define the base urls as Struct in Constants
struct Constants {
struct APIDetails {
static let APIScheme = "https"
static let APIHost = "restcountries.eu"
static let APIPath = "/rest/v1/alpha/"
}
}
private func createURLFromParameters(parameters: [String:Any], pathparam: String?) -> URL {
var components = URLComponents()
components.scheme = Constants.APIDetails.APIScheme
components.host = Constants.APIDetails.APIHost
components.path = Constants.APIDetails.APIPath
if let paramPath = pathparam {
components.path = Constants.APIDetails.APIPath + "\(paramPath)"
}
if !parameters.isEmpty {
components.queryItems = [URLQueryItem]()
for (key, value) in parameters {
let queryItem = URLQueryItem(name: key, value: "\(value)")
components.queryItems!.append(queryItem)
}
}
return components.url!
}
let url = createURLFromParameters(parameters: ["fullText" : "true"], pathparam: "IN")
//Result url= https://restcountries.eu/rest/v1/alpha/IN?fullText=true
Swift 3:
extension URL {
func getQueryItemValueForKey(key: String) -> String? {
guard let components = NSURLComponents(url: self, resolvingAgainstBaseURL: false) else {
return nil
}
guard let queryItems = components.queryItems else { return nil }
return queryItems.filter {
$0.name.lowercased() == key.lowercased()
}.first?.value
}
}
I used it to get the image name for UIImagePickerController
in func imagePickerController(_ picker: UIImagePickerController, didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo info: [String : Any])
:
var originalFilename = ""
if let url = info[UIImagePickerControllerReferenceURL] as? URL, let imageIdentifier = url.getQueryItemValueForKey(key: "id") {
originalFilename = imageIdentifier + ".png"
print("file name : \(originalFilename)")
}