Convert UTF-8 encoded NSData to NSString

Question

I have UTF-8 encoded NSData from windows server and I want to convert it to NSString for iPhone. Since data contains characters (like a degree symb

Answer 1

I humbly submit a category to make this less annoying:

@interface NSData (EasyUTF8)

// Safely decode the bytes into a UTF8 string
- (NSString *)asUTF8String;

@end

and

@implementation NSData (EasyUTF8)

- (NSString *)asUTF8String {
    return [[NSString alloc] initWithData:self encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];    
}

@end

(Note that if you're not using ARC you'll need an autorelease there.)

Now instead of the appallingly verbose:

NSData *data = ...
[[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

You can do:

NSData *data = ...
[data asUTF8String];