Converting Hex String to NSData in Swift

Question

I got the code to convert String to HEX-String in objective-C.

- (NSString *) CreateDataWithHexString:(NSString*)inputString
{
NSUInteger inLength = [inputSt         


        

Answer 1

Here's a simple solution I settled on:

extension NSData {
    public convenience init(hexString: String) {
        var index = hexString.startIndex
        var bytes: [UInt8] = []
        repeat {
            bytes.append(hexString[index...index.advancedBy(1)].withCString {
                return UInt8(strtoul($0, nil, 16))
            })

            index = index.advancedBy(2)
        } while index.distanceTo(hexString.endIndex) != 0

        self.init(bytes: &bytes, length: bytes.count)
    }
}

Usage:

let data = NSData(hexString: "b8dfb080bc33fb564249e34252bf143d88fc018f")

Output:

print(data)
>>> 

Update 6/29/2016

I updated the initializer to handle malformed data (i.e., invalid characters or odd number of characters).

public convenience init?(hexString: String, force: Bool) {
    let characterSet = NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: "0123456789abcdefABCDEF")
    for scalar in hexString.unicodeScalars {
        if characterSet.characterIsMember(UInt16(scalar.value)) {
            hexString.append(scalar)
        }
        else if !force {
            return nil
        }
    }

    if hexString.characters.count % 2 == 1 {
        if force {
            hexString = "0" + hexString
        }
        else {
            return nil
        }
    }

    var index = hexString.startIndex
    var bytes: [UInt8] = []
    repeat {
        bytes.append(hexString[index...index.advancedBy(1)].withCString {
            return UInt8(strtoul($0, nil, 16))
            })

        index = index.advancedBy(2)
    } while index.distanceTo(hexString.endIndex) != 0

    self.init(bytes: &bytes, length: bytes.count)
}