Best way to serialize an NSData into a hexadeximal string

Question

I am looking for a nice-cocoa way to serialize an NSData object into a hexadecimal string. The idea is to serialize the deviceToken used for notification before sending it to my server.

I have the following implementation, but I am thinking there must be some shorter and nicer way to do it.

+ (NSString*) serializeDeviceToken:(NSData*) deviceToken
{
    NSMutableString *str = [NSMutableString stringWithCapacity:64];
    int length = [deviceToken length];
    char *bytes = malloc(sizeof(char) * length);

    [deviceToken getBytes:bytes length:length];

    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
    {
        [str appendFormat:@"%02.2hhX", bytes[i]];
    }
    free(bytes);

    return str;
}

Answer 1

This is a category applied to NSData that I wrote. It returns a hexadecimal NSString representing the NSData, where the data can be any length. Returns an empty string if NSData is empty.

NSData+Conversion.h

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface NSData (NSData_Conversion)

#pragma mark - String Conversion
- (NSString *)hexadecimalString;

@end

NSData+Conversion.m

#import "NSData+Conversion.h"

@implementation NSData (NSData_Conversion)

#pragma mark - String Conversion
- (NSString *)hexadecimalString {
    /* Returns hexadecimal string of NSData. Empty string if data is empty.   */

    const unsigned char *dataBuffer = (const unsigned char *)[self bytes];

    if (!dataBuffer)
        return [NSString string];

    NSUInteger          dataLength  = [self length];
    NSMutableString     *hexString  = [NSMutableString stringWithCapacity:(dataLength * 2)];

    for (int i = 0; i < dataLength; ++i)
        [hexString appendString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%02lx", (unsigned long)dataBuffer[i]]];

    return [NSString stringWithString:hexString];
}

@end

Usage:

NSData *someData = ...;
NSString *someDataHexadecimalString = [someData hexadecimalString];

This is "probably" better than calling [someData description] and then stripping the spaces, <'s, and >'s. Stripping characters just feels too "hacky". Plus you never know if Apple will change the formatting of NSData's -description in the future.

NOTE: I have had people reach out to me about licensing for the code in this answer. I hereby dedicate my copyright in the code I posted in this answer to the public domain.