Charset Objective-C Reference Documentation

CkoCharset

Current Version: 10.1.2
Requires Chilkat Bundle License

A component/class for converting character data from one encoding to another. This software is unique in that the data required for converting to/from the supported charsets is entirely embedded witin the Chilkat DLL/library. It does not depend on what code pages may or may not be installed on a particular computer. This allows programs to operate correctly regardless of the locale, OS version, or other factors.

Object Creation

CkoCharset *obj = [[CkoCharset alloc] init];

Properties

AltToCharset
@property (nonatomic, copy) NSString *AltToCharset;

If the ErrorAction property is set to 6, then this property controls how errors are handled. It specifies an alternate "To" charset. When a character in the input data cannot be converted to the target charset, an attempt is made to convert it to the AltToCharset. If that fails, the input character is dropped.

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DebugLogFilePath
@property (nonatomic, copy) NSString *DebugLogFilePath;

If set to a file path, this property logs the LastErrorText of each Chilkat method or property call to the specified file. This logging helps identify the context and history of Chilkat calls leading up to any crash or hang, aiding in debugging.

Enabling the VerboseLogging property provides more detailed information. This property is mainly used for debugging rare instances where a Chilkat method call causes a hang or crash, which should generally not happen.

Possible causes of hangs include:

  • A timeout property set to 0, indicating an infinite timeout.
  • A hang occurring within an event callback in the application code.
  • An internal bug in the Chilkat code causing the hang.

More Information and Examples
Example showing how to use DebugLogFilePath.
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ErrorAction
@property (nonatomic, copy) NSNumber *ErrorAction;

Controls how errors are handled. When a character in the input data cannot be converted to the target charset, the action taken is controlled by this property. The possible settings are: (0) drop the error characters, (1) substitute the data set by the SetErrorBytes or SetErrorString method, (2) convert to a hex-escaped string (&#xXXXX), (3) RESERVED, (4) RESERVED, (5) RESERVED, (6) convert the error character to the AltToCharset instead, if that fails then drop the character, (7) Pass non-convertible characters to the output unchanged.

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FromCharset
@property (nonatomic, copy) NSString *FromCharset;

Tells the charset converter the charset of the input data for a conversion. Possible values are: 

<font size="2" face="MS Sans Serif">
us-ascii
unicode  (also known as UTF16LE or simply UTF16)
unicodefffe  (also known as UTF16BE)
ebcdic
iso-8859-1
iso-8859-2
iso-8859-3
iso-8859-4
iso-8859-5
iso-8859-6
iso-8859-7
iso-8859-8
iso-8859-9
iso-8859-13
iso-8859-15
windows-874
windows-1250
windows-1251
windows-1252
windows-1253
windows-1254
windows-1255
windows-1256
windows-1257
windows-1258
utf-7
utf-8
utf-32
utf-32be
shift_jis
gb2312
ks_c_5601-1987
big5
iso-2022-jp
iso-2022-kr
euc-jp
euc-kr
macintosh
x-mac-japanese
x-mac-chinesetrad
x-mac-korean
x-mac-arabic
x-mac-hebrew
x-mac-greek
x-mac-cyrillic
x-mac-chinesesimp
x-mac-romanian
x-mac-ukrainian
x-mac-thai
x-mac-ce
x-mac-icelandic
x-mac-turkish
x-mac-croatian
asmo-708
dos-720
dos-862
ibm01140
ibm01141
ibm01142
ibm01143
ibm01144
ibm01145
ibm01146
ibm01147
ibm01148
ibm01149
ibm037
ibm437
ibm500
ibm737
ibm775
ibm850
ibm852
ibm855
ibm857
ibm00858
ibm860
ibm861
ibm863
ibm864
ibm865
cp866
ibm869
ibm870
cp875
koi8-r
koi8-u
</font>

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LastErrorHtml
@property (nonatomic, readonly, copy) NSString *LastErrorHtml;

Provides HTML-formatted information about the last called method or property. If a method call fails or behaves unexpectedly, check this property for details. Note that information is available regardless of the method call's success.

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LastErrorText
@property (nonatomic, readonly, copy) NSString *LastErrorText;

Provides plain text information about the last called method or property. If a method call fails or behaves unexpectedly, check this property for details. Note that information is available regardless of the method call's success.

More Information and Examples
Concept of LastErrorTextLastErrorText Standard Information
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LastErrorXml
@property (nonatomic, readonly, copy) NSString *LastErrorXml;

Provides XML-formatted information about the last called method or property. If a method call fails or behaves unexpectedly, check this property for details. Note that information is available regardless of the method call's success.

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LastInputAsHex
@property (nonatomic, readonly, copy) NSString *LastInputAsHex;

If SaveLast is set to true, then the input and output of a conversion is saved to allow the exact bytes that are sent to the converter to be seen (for debugging purposes). This property shows the last input data in a hexidecimalized string.

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LastInputAsQP
@property (nonatomic, readonly, copy) NSString *LastInputAsQP;

If SaveLast is set to true, then the input and output of a conversion is saved to allow the exact bytes that are sent to the converter to be seen (for debugging purposes). This property shows the last input data in a quoted-printable string.

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LastMethodSuccess
@property (nonatomic) BOOL LastMethodSuccess;

Indicates the success or failure of the most recent method call: YES means success, NO means failure. This property remains unchanged by property setters or getters. This method is present to address challenges in checking for null or Nothing returns in certain programming languages.

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LastOutputAsHex
@property (nonatomic, readonly, copy) NSString *LastOutputAsHex;

If SaveLast is set to true, then the input and output of a conversion is saved to allow the exact bytes that are sent to the converter to be seen (for debugging purposes). This property shows the last output data in a hexidecimalized string.

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LastOutputAsQP
@property (nonatomic, readonly, copy) NSString *LastOutputAsQP;

If SaveLast is set to true, then the input and output of a conversion is saved to allow the exact bytes that are sent to the converter to be seen (for debugging purposes). This property shows the last output data in a quoted-printable string.

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SaveLast
@property (nonatomic) BOOL SaveLast;

Tells the component to keep the input/output byte data in memory after a conversion is complete so the data can be examined via the LastInputAsHex/QP and LastOutputAsHex/QP properties. (for debugging purposes)

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ToCharset
@property (nonatomic, copy) NSString *ToCharset;

Tells the charset converter the target charset for a conversion. Possible values are: 

<font size="2" face="MS Sans Serif">
us-ascii
unicode  (also known as UTF16LE or simply UTF16)
unicodefffe  (also known as UTF16BE)
ebcdic
iso-8859-1
iso-8859-2
iso-8859-3
iso-8859-4
iso-8859-5
iso-8859-6
iso-8859-7
iso-8859-8
iso-8859-9
iso-8859-13
iso-8859-15
windows-874
windows-1250
windows-1251
windows-1252
windows-1253
windows-1254
windows-1255
windows-1256
windows-1257
windows-1258
utf-7
utf-8
utf-32
utf-32be
shift_jis
gb2312
ks_c_5601-1987
big5
iso-2022-jp
iso-2022-kr
euc-jp
euc-kr
macintosh
x-mac-japanese
x-mac-chinesetrad
x-mac-korean
x-mac-arabic
x-mac-hebrew
x-mac-greek
x-mac-cyrillic
x-mac-chinesesimp
x-mac-romanian
x-mac-ukrainian
x-mac-thai
x-mac-ce
x-mac-icelandic
x-mac-turkish
x-mac-croatian
asmo-708
dos-720
dos-862
ibm01140
ibm01141
ibm01142
ibm01143
ibm01144
ibm01145
ibm01146
ibm01147
ibm01148
ibm01149
ibm037
ibm437
ibm500
ibm737
ibm775
ibm850
ibm852
ibm855
ibm857
ibm00858
ibm860
ibm861
ibm863
ibm864
ibm865
cp866
ibm869
ibm870
cp875
koi8-r
koi8-u
</font>

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VerboseLogging
@property (nonatomic) BOOL VerboseLogging;

If set to YES, then the contents of LastErrorText (or LastErrorXml, or LastErrorHtml) may contain more verbose information. The default value is NO. Verbose logging should only be used for debugging. The potentially large quantity of logged information may adversely affect peformance.

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Version
@property (nonatomic, readonly, copy) NSString *Version;

Version of the component/library, such as "10.1.0"

More Information and Examples
How to get the Chilkat version at runtime.
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Methods

CharsetToCodePage
- (NSNumber *)CharsetToCodePage:(NSString *)charsetName;

Converts a character set name, such as "iso-8859-1," to its corresponding code page number, like 28591.

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CodePageToCharset
- (NSString *)CodePageToCharset:(NSNumber *)codePage;

Converts a code page number to a charset name. For example, 65001 converts to "utf-8".

Returns nil on failure

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ConvertData
- (NSData *)ConvertData:(NSData *)inData;

Converts character data from one charset to another. Before calling ConvertData, the FromCharset and ToCharset properties must be set to the source and destination charset names, such as "iso-8859-1" or "Shift_JIS".

Returns nil on failure

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ConvertFile
- (BOOL)ConvertFile:(NSString *)srcPath
    destPath:(NSString *)destPath;

Converts a file from one character encoding to another. The FromCharset and ToCharset properties specify the source and destination character encodings. If the ToCharset is utf-16 or utf-8, then the preamble (also known as BOM) is included in the output. (Call ConvertFileNoPreamble to suppress the output of the BOM.)

Returns YES for success, NO for failure.

More Information and Examples
Convert a File's Character Encoding from UTF-8 to UFT-8-BOM
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ConvertFileNoPreamble
- (BOOL)ConvertFileNoPreamble:(NSString *)srcPath
    destPath:(NSString *)destPath;

Converts a file from one character encoding to another. The FromCharset and ToCharset properties specify the source and destination character encodings. No preamble (also known as BOM) is included in the output.

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ConvertFromUnicode
- (NSData *)ConvertFromUnicode:(NSString *)inData;

Converts Unicode (utf-16) text to the charset specified by the ToCharset property.

Returns nil on failure

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ConvertFromUtf16
- (NSData *)ConvertFromUtf16:(NSData *)uniData;

Converts utf-16 text to the charset specified by the ToCharset property.

Returns nil on failure

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ConvertHtml
- (NSData *)ConvertHtml:(NSData *)htmlIn;

Converts HTML text from one character encoding to another. The FromCharset and ToCharset properties must be set prior to calling this method. This method automatically edits the META tag within the HTML that indicates the charset.

Returns nil on failure

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ConvertHtmlFile
- (BOOL)ConvertHtmlFile:(NSString *)srcPath
    destPath:(NSString *)destPath;

Converts an HTML file from one character encoding to another. The ToCharset properties must be set prior to calling this method. If the FromCharset is not set, it is obtained from the HTML META tag that indicates the charset. This method automatically edits the META tag within the HTML that indicates the charset.

Returns YES for success, NO for failure.

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ConvertToUnicode
- (NSString *)ConvertToUnicode:(NSData *)inData;

Converts multibyte character data to a Unicode string. The FromCharset property should be set before calling this method.

Returns nil on failure

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ConvertToUtf16
- (NSData *)ConvertToUtf16:(NSData *)mbData;

Converts the mbData to utf-16 bytes.

Returns nil on failure

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EntityEncodeDec
- (NSString *)EntityEncodeDec:(NSString *)inStr;

Converts non-US-ASCII characters to Unicode decimal entities (&#xxxxx;)

Returns nil on failure

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EntityEncodeHex
- (NSString *)EntityEncodeHex:(NSString *)inStr;

Converts non-US-ASCII characters to Unicode hex entities (&#xXXXX;)

Returns nil on failure

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GetHtmlCharset
- (NSString *)GetHtmlCharset:(NSData *)htmlData;

Examines HTML text and extracts the charset name specified by the META tag, if present.

Returns nil on failure

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GetHtmlFileCharset
- (NSString *)GetHtmlFileCharset:(NSString *)htmlPath;

Examines an HTML file and extracts the charset name specified by the META tag, if present.

Returns nil on failure

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HtmlDecodeToStr
- (NSString *)HtmlDecodeToStr:(NSString *)str;

Converts HTML entities to Unicode characters.

Returns nil on failure

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HtmlEntityDecode
- (NSData *)HtmlEntityDecode:(NSData *)inData;

Decodes HTML entities. See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html for information on HTML entities. Examples of HTML entities are &lt; , &#229; , &#xE5; , &#x6C34; , &Iacute; , etc.

Returns nil on failure

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HtmlEntityDecodeFile
- (BOOL)HtmlEntityDecodeFile:(NSString *)srcPath
    destPath:(NSString *)destPath;

Decodes HTML entities in a file and creates a new HTML file with the entities decoded. See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html for information on HTML entities. Examples of HTML entities are &lt; , &#229; , &#xE5; , &#x6C34; , &Iacute; , etc.

Returns YES for success, NO for failure.

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LowerCase
- (NSString *)LowerCase:(NSString *)inStr;

Converts a string to lowercase.

Returns nil on failure

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ReadFile
- (NSData *)ReadFile:(NSString *)path;

Convenience method for reading the entire contents of a file into a byte array.

Returns nil on failure

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ReadFileToString
- (NSString *)ReadFileToString:(NSString *)path
    srcCharset:(NSString *)srcCharset;

Reads a text file and returns the text converted to a Unicode string. The filename is specified by the first method argument, and the charset of the text data is specified by the 2nd method argument.

Returns nil on failure

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SetErrorString
- (void)SetErrorString:(NSString *)str
    charset:(NSString *)charset;

If the ErrorAction property is set to 1, the string passed to this method is used as the result for any characters that cannot be converted during a conversion.

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UpperCase
- (NSString *)UpperCase:(NSString *)inStr;

Converts a string to uppercase.

Returns nil on failure

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UrlDecodeStr
- (NSString *)UrlDecodeStr:(NSString *)inStr;

URL decodes a string.

This method assumes the ANSI byte representation was used for encoding. For example, the letter É, where the ANSI charset is Latin-1, would appear as "%C9" when URL encoded. (As opposed to the utf-8 encoding where É is represented by 2 bytes 0xC3, 0x89 and would appear as "%C3%89" when URl encoded. This method assumes ANSI encoding.

You can use encoding/decoding methods in Chilkat's StringBuilder class to specify the charset from which to decode or encode.

Returns nil on failure

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VerifyData
- (BOOL)VerifyData:(NSString *)charset
    charData:(NSData *)charData;

Returns true if the byte data conforms to the charset passed in the first argument.

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VerifyFile
- (BOOL)VerifyFile:(NSString *)charset
    path:(NSString *)path;

Returns true if the file contains character data that conforms to the charset passed in the 1st argument.

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WriteFile
- (BOOL)WriteFile:(NSString *)path
    dataBuf:(NSData *)dataBuf;

Convenience method for saving an entire byte array to a file.

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WriteStringToFile
- (BOOL)WriteStringToFile:(NSString *)str
    path:(NSString *)path
    charset:(NSString *)charset;

Converts a Unicode string to a multibyte charset and writes the multibyte text data to a file. The destination charset is specified in the 2nd method argument.

Returns YES for success, NO for failure.

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