Printing NSData using NSLog

Question

How can I print the contents of an NSData object using NSLog:

-(void) post:(NSString*) msg to:(NSString*) link{
    NSString *myRequestString = [NSString str         


        

Answer 1

I somewhat often want to see what the NSData actually represent. Usually it's some sort of text, which makes hex a bit inconvenient. Therefore I usually write this snippet in the JavaScript console in my web browser, works pretty fast and can be modified easily if some continued processing would be wanted.

1. Copy/paste the following script into your browser console (right click here -> Inspect element), hit enter

   (function nsDataHexToString() {
       var str = prompt("Paste the hex string here:", "ié. 48656c6c 6f207468 657265...")
       var chs = str.replace(/[^A-F0-9]/ig,"").split("")
       var res = ""
       var cnt = 2
       for (var i = 0; i+cnt-1

2. Run your swift/obj-c code, put in a breakpoint and inspect your NSData object

   let sample = "Hello there"
   let data = sample.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)
   // Put breakpoint here, hover over "data", and press the eye/i
   

3. Copy the hex (something like <48656c6c 6f207468 657265>) and paste into the browser prompt

4. The console will then show a string: "Hello there"

Most recently, it was to inspect the output from NSAttributedString.dataFromRange, the rtfd was using a bit different encoding, but I got what I needed :) Also useful for some json conversion issues, etc.

Good luck :)