This is working for me in Swift 5. The usage case is taking a URL from the clipboard or similar which may already have escaped characters but which also contains Unicode characters which could cause URLComponents
or URL(string:)
to fail.
First, create a character set that includes all URL-legal characters:
extension CharacterSet {
/// Characters valid in at least one part of a URL.
///
/// These characters are not allowed in ALL parts of a URL; each part has different requirements. This set is useful for checking for Unicode characters that need to be percent encoded before performing a validity check on individual URL components.
static var urlAllowedCharacters: CharacterSet {
// Start by including hash, which isn't in any set
var characters = CharacterSet(charactersIn: "#")
// All URL-legal characters
characters.formUnion(.urlUserAllowed)
characters.formUnion(.urlPasswordAllowed)
characters.formUnion(.urlHostAllowed)
characters.formUnion(.urlPathAllowed)
characters.formUnion(.urlQueryAllowed)
characters.formUnion(.urlFragmentAllowed)
return characters
}
}
Next, extend String
with a method to encode URLs:
extension String {
/// Converts a string to a percent-encoded URL, including Unicode characters.
///
/// - Returns: An encoded URL if all steps succeed, otherwise nil.
func encodedUrl() -> URL? {
// Remove preexisting encoding,
guard let decodedString = self.removingPercentEncoding,
// encode any Unicode characters so URLComponents doesn't choke,
let unicodeEncodedString = decodedString.addingPercentEncoding(withAllowedCharacters: .urlAllowedCharacters),
// break into components to use proper encoding for each part,
let components = URLComponents(string: unicodeEncodedString),
// and reencode, to revert decoding while encoding missed characters.
let percentEncodedUrl = components.url else {
// Encoding failed
return nil
}
return percentEncodedUrl
}
}
Which can be tested like:
let urlText = "https://www.example.com/??/search?q=123&foo=bar&multi=eggs+and+ham&hangul=??&spaced=lovely%20spam&illegal=<>#top"
let url = encodedUrl(from: urlText)
Value of url
at the end: https://www.example.com/%ED%8F%B4%EB%8D%94/search?q=123&foo=bar&multi=eggs+and+ham&hangul=%ED%95%9C%EA%B8%80&spaced=lovely%20spam&illegal=%3C%3E#top
Note that both %20
and +
spacing are preserved, Unicode characters are encoded, the %20
in the original urlText
is not double encoded, and the anchor (fragment, or #
) remains.
Edit: Now checking for validity of each component.