iOS - build email URL without parsing

Question

I want to build an email URL using some class (NSURL or similar) BUT I do not want the overhead of parsing a string. I want to be able to specify the scheme (mailto in this case) and the address ([email protected] in this case.)

I've tried this code:

NSString *address = @"[email protected]";
NSString *scheme = @"mailto";

NSURL *url = [[NSURL alloc] initWithScheme:scheme host:address path:@"/"];
NSLog(@"test2: %@", [url absoluteString]);

but it outputs:

mailto://[email protected]/

which isn't even a valid email URL.

What are my options?

p.s. please don't suggest using NSDataDetector because it is even more expensive than the usual kind of string parsing.

Answer 1

Assuming you do have purely the email address and no other paraphernalia, the solution is simple:

- (NSURL *)mailtoURLWithEmailAddress:(NSString *)address;
{
  address = [address stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
  NSURL *result = [NSURL URLWithString:[@"mailto:" stringByAppendingString:address]];
  return result;
}

Adding percent escapes is important should there be any chance that somebody might specify an address outside of the ASCII characters, or include one of the reserved URL characters.

For a more capable solution, see KSMailtoURLs in my KSFileUtilities repository. It adds:

• Handling of strings that include the recipient's name, as well as address
• Encoding of email subject line etc.