HTTP Body in NSURLRequest

Question

I want to build 2 functions to construct the HTTPBody to pass to NSURLRequest.

Function 1: Accepts NSDictionary, which needs to converted into NSData

Function 2: Accepts NSString, which needs to converted into NSData

Code For Function 1:

//HTTPBodyParameters is of the type NSDictionary which is the input parameter

    let HTTPBody : NSData?

    do {
        HTTPBody = try NSJSONSerialization.dataWithJSONObject(HTTPBodyParameters, options: NSJSONWritingOptions.PrettyPrinted)
    }
    catch let error as NSError {

        print("Error in creating body - \(error)")

        HTTPBody = nil
    }

Questions:

1. Does my code hold good for all scenarios when the input is an NSDictionary or is there a better approach ?

2. How to convert String (swift) into NSData without using NSString ?

Answer 1

This is the answer for point 1:

   //You can type cast to AnyObject. So it can accept to NSDictionary and NSString
   request.HTTPBody = NSJSONSerialization.dataWithJSONObject(str as AnyObject, options: nil, error: &error)

This is the answer for point 2:

 var str: String = "teststring"
 var data: NSData = str.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)!

Hope this will be helpful.