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I am using AFNetworking 2.0.

In AFNetworking, AFHTTPRequestOperationManager object has an API:

(AFHTTPRequestOperation *)POST:(NSString *)URLString
                    parameters:(id)parameters
                       success:(void (^)(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id responseObject))success failure:(void (^)(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error))failure

It accepts NSDictionary as params for the JSON Payload which we wish to 'POST' to the server. In my payload I have following key-value pair:

"buttonActionParam":"/catalog/special/international-calling"

Posting this payload server returns invalid JSON. Looking at the payload on the server side I realized that AFNetworking is actually sending:

"buttonActionParam":"\/catalog\/special\/international-calling".

I know that AFNetworking library uses NSJSONSerialization's class method -dataWithJSONObject:, which causes this. My question is:

Q. How to work around this issue?

Deborshi Saha
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  • Not sure I understand the question: you're saying that you're trying to send "buttonActionParam":"/catalog/special/international-calling", and this is exactly what is being sent by AFNetworking, so what's the problem? – Vladimir Kofman Oct 09 '15 at 08:58
  • Edited my question. Had to put escape characters. :) – Deborshi Saha Oct 09 '15 at 22:41
  • The `NSData` that comes out of `NSJSONSerialization` isn't quite the same as what you're seeing on the server side - it shows `{"buttonActionParam":"\/catalog\/special\/international-calling"}` in my hex editor. I wonder if it's a character encoding issue - looks like the server is sticking in an extra escape \ for some reason. – Rich Tolley Oct 09 '15 at 23:34
  • @RichTolley I edited what is coming out of NSJSONSerialization. I am looking for `{"buttonActionParam":"/catalog/special/international-calling"}` and not `{"buttonActionParam":"\/catalog\/special\/international-calling"}` – Deborshi Saha Oct 10 '15 at 01:14

1 Answers1

1

This is know problem. It actually behaves as designed (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/20448342/669586).

There are 3 possible solution:

  1. Make your server aware of the possibility that strings can be escaped. In general, this is the best solution.

  2. Use a different JSON encoder (e.g. SBJson) and encode the object to NSData instead of using AFNetworking default serializer.

  3. Encode using NSJSONSerialization and then convert the resulting data to a NSString (using NSUTF8StringEncoding), sanitize it and convert it back to NSData. Again, you have to do that before giving the object to AFNetworking.

The best way to implement 2 or 3 is setting a custom requestSerializer on the AFHTTPSessionManager instance. For example, see this answer for an example of implementing 3 (note it's in Swift).

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Sulthan
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  • #2 will work only if SBJson is used after AFNetworking. #3 I tried before posting. Doesn't work. I will try #1. – Deborshi Saha Oct 21 '15 at 07:05
  • @DeborshiSaha Nope, it mostly about how you set up the serializer. If you don't let AFNetworking use its default request serializer (which uses `NSJSONSerialization`), then you have no problem. – Sulthan Oct 21 '15 at 07:10