Swift 4 How to remove %EF%BB%BF from URL created from URLComponent()?

Question

I attempt to create URL from components

var com =  URLComponents()
com.scheme = "http"
com.host = "192.168.1.99"
com.port = 77
com.path = "/api/dosomething/55"

print("SHOW ME URl =  \(com.url!))")

What I got is something like this

http://192.168.1.99:77/%EF%BB%BFapi/dosomething/55

Always got %EF%BB%BF, in which case the url becomes invalid

I want to remove %EF%BB%BFfrom the URL

How can I do that?

I can't, reproduce, when I copy-pasted your code, I got `SHOW ME URl = http://192.168.1.99:77/api/dosomething/55)`/ Tested in Playground, Xcode 10. — regina_fallangi, Oct 05 '18 at 09:59
`%EF%BB%BF` is an percent encoded byte sequence of ZERO WIDTH NON-BREAKING SPACE(aka BOM in UTF-16/UTF-32). In UTF-8, it's just an extra character. You may be taking the path component from some external resource. You may need to fix that part or the way creating the external resource. — OOPer, Oct 05 '18 at 10:01
For example, some Japanese-made editors show `UTF-8 with extra ZERO WIDTH NON-BREAKING SPACE` as **UTF-8**, and the right `UTF-8` as **UTF-8N**. You need to use the right `UTF-8`. — OOPer, Oct 05 '18 at 10:04

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 05 '18 at 10:04

Direct answer to your question

You can replace this pattern with nothing :

let theURL = "http://192.168.1.99:77/%EF%BB%BFapi/dosomething/55"
let partToRemove = "%EF%BB%BF"
let clearURL = theURL.replacingOccurrences(of: partToRemove, with: "")
print(clearURL)

ielyamani · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-05T11:05:01.893

0

That's a URL-encoding of a UTF-8 BOM, it may be caused by processing of the URLs with some text editors. Trim white spaces from your path string:

var com =  URLComponents()
com.scheme = "http"
com.host = "192.168.1.99"
com.port = 77
let path = //The path
let trimmedPath = path.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespaces)
com.path = trimmedPath

print("SHOW ME URl =  \(com.url!)")

In utf-8, the 'ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE' is encoded as 0xEF 0xBB 0xBF

edited Oct 05 '18 at 11:05

answered Oct 05 '18 at 10:36

ielyamani

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`.whitespaces` does not seem to contain the BOM character. – Pierre Aug 31 '23 at 12:44

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 31 '23 at 12:48

In complement to ielyamani's answer, as .whitespaces does not seem to contain the BOM character, I suggest this :

extension String
{
    var withoutBom: String
    {
        let bom = "\u{FEFF}"
        if self.starts(with: bom)
        {
            return String(dropFirst(bom.count))
        }
        return self
    }
}

and then using something like :

path.withoutBom

Swift 4 How to remove %EF%BB%BF from URL created from URLComponent()?

3 Answers3