iPhone: Parsing Xml with arabic content shows empty value

Question

I am trying to parse XML file which contains arabic words as follow:

 <NewsComponent>
  <HeadLine>العلاجية</HeadLine>
</NewsComponent>

when I NSLog the string on the NSXMLParser delegate it prints empty string, and even when i parse the data to the UITableView it shows empty text.

I am encoding the data as UTF-8 before passing it to the parser.

How can I parse the XMl without losing the content of the tag HeadLine?

notes:

1. The same XML with English language is working correctly.

2. Showing the XML in Any browser shows the data correctly.

3. converting the NSData to NSString and NSLog-ing before parsing the NSString show the xml correctly too.

Edit How am I doing this?

NSString *sURLREST = @"http://www.example.com/getXml";

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:sURLREST];
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];

NSURLResponse *response;
NSError *error = nil;

NSData *data = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest: request returningResponse: &response error: &error];
NSString* output = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

NSData* dataOutput = [output dataUsingEncoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSXMLParser *parser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] dataOutput]; 


-(void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string
{
    if([sCurrentItem isEqualToString:@"HeadLine"])
    {
        [mutuableArray addObject:string];
       // I am just adding the string value to a NSMutuableArray to bind it with the UITableView.
        NSLog(@"%@",string);
    }
}

- (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didStartElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName attributes:(NSDictionary *)attributeDict
{
    sCurrentItem = elementName;
}

Can you post how you are reading the data in and getting it into UTF8 before sending it to the parser? — Tim Dean
@Tim Dean: thanks for the response I am updating the question. — Ahmad Kayyali
Please show us the implementation of your parser:foundCharacters: method. — Ole Begemann

Ole Begemann Ole Begemann · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-26T09:35:15

Your error lies in parser:foundCharacters:. You cannot expect that that method will be called only once per element. It may be called multiple times. You have to create an empty mutable string before the method is called the first time per element (in parser:didStartElement:) and then append the new characters to that string. The string is not complete until parser:didEndElement: is called.

See Apple's sample code. They do it correctly.

iPhone: Parsing Xml with arabic content shows empty value

1 Answers