Best way to parse URL string to get values for keys?

Question

I need to parse a URL string like this one:

&ad_eurl=http://www.youtube.com/video/4bL4FI1Gz6s&hl=it_IT&iv_logging_level=3&ad_flags=0&endscreen_module=http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swfbin/endscreen-vfl6o3XZn.swf&cid=241&cust_gender=1&avg_rating=4.82280613104

I need to split the NSString up into the signle parts like cid=241 and &avg_rating=4.82280613104. I've been doing this with substringWithRange: but the values return in a random order, so that messes it up. Is there any class that allows easy parsing where you can basically convert it to NSDictionary to be able to read the value for a key (for example ValueForKey:cid should return 241). Or is there just another easier way to parse it than using NSMakeRange to get a substring?

Answer 1

I also answered this at https://stackoverflow.com/a/26406478/215748.

You can use queryItems in URLComponents.

When you get this property’s value, the NSURLComponents class parses the query string and returns an array of NSURLQueryItem objects, each of which represents a single key-value pair, in the order in which they appear in the original query string.

let url = "http://example.com?param1=value1&param2=param2"
let queryItems = URLComponents(string: url)?.queryItems
let param1 = queryItems?.filter({$0.name == "param1"}).first
print(param1?.value)

Alternatively, you can add an extension on URL to make things easier.

extension URL {
    var queryParameters: QueryParameters { return QueryParameters(url: self) }
}

class QueryParameters {
    let queryItems: [URLQueryItem]
    init(url: URL?) {
        queryItems = URLComponents(string: url?.absoluteString ?? "")?.queryItems ?? []
        print(queryItems)
    }
    subscript(name: String) -> String? {
        return queryItems.first(where: { $0.name == name })?.value
    }
}

You can then access the parameter by its name.

let url = URL(string: "http://example.com?param1=value1&param2=param2")!
print(url.queryParameters["param1"])