Swift String encoding and NSXMLParser parsing issues - string

Question

My App is calling the free Weather Forecast web service found at this URL:
http://www.webservicex.net/globalweather.asmx/GetWeather?CityName=Boston&CountryName=United+States
I'm using the usual NSURLConnection and NSXMLParser delegate methods to parse the incoming data (I've done this a million times before) but quite strangely, the NSMutableData that is returned is not getting converted to a string correctly via NSUTF8StringEncoding. Its basically failing to convert the "<" and ">" characters of the opening and closing XML tags, giving me "& l t;" and "& g t;" instead.
The problem seems to be in the connectionDidFinishLoading function:
func connection(connection: NSURLConnection, didReceiveData data: NSData) {
webServiceData!.appendData(data)
}
func connectionDidFinishLoading(connection: NSURLConnection) {
let XMLResponseString = NSString(data: webServiceData!, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding)!
println("XMLResponseString = \(XMLResponseString)")
}
The output I get from the println statement there is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<string xmlns="http://www.webserviceX.NET"><?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<CurrentWeather>
<Location>DALLAS EXECUTIVE AIRPORT, TX, United States (KRBD) 32-41N 096-52W 203M</Location>
<Time>Dec 30, 2014 - 08:53 AM EST / 2014.12.30 1353 UTC</Time>
<Wind> from the NE (050 degrees) at 12 MPH (10 KT):0</Wind>
<Visibility> 9 mile(s):0</Visibility>
<SkyConditions> overcast</SkyConditions>
<Temperature> 39.9 F (4.4 C)</Temperature>
<DewPoint> 34.0 F (1.1 C)</DewPoint>
<RelativeHumidity> 79%</RelativeHumidity>
<Pressure> 30.42 in. Hg (1030 hPa)</Pressure>
<Status>Success</Status>
</CurrentWeather></string>
So as you can see I'm getting the first 2 tags correctly - the "< ?XML >" and "< string xmlns >" tags, but the rest are all showing up as "& l t;" and "& g t;"
What's really strange is that its saying encoding="utf-8" for the first tag, but on the second line (towards the end) its saying encoding="utf-16".
So I tried using NSUTF16StringEncoding:
let XMLResponseString = NSString(data: webServiceData!, encoding: NSUTF16StringEncoding)!
and that basically gave me chinese looking characters.
I also tried running the parser directly on the url instead of the NSMutableData that's returned, like so:
myXMLParser = NSXMLParser(contentsOfURL:theURL!)!
(the original statement was this:
myXMLParser = NSXMLParser(data:webServiceData)
but neither of these worked.
So what's going on here? Any suggestions on how to get this to work properly?

Answer 1

This is actually the remote service being broken, rather than your code. Yes, the server really is sending XML in XML for no particularly good reason.
$ curl 'http://www.webservicex.net/globalweather.asmx/GetWeather?CityName=Boston&CountryName=United+States'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<string xmlns="http://www.webserviceX.NET"><?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<CurrentWeather>
<Location>BOSTON LOGAN INTERNATIONAL, MA, United States (KBOS) 42-22N 071-01W 54M</Location>