AFNetworking 500 response body

Question

I've been using AFNetworking 2.0 in my app. I've noticed that if my web-service returns a 500 status code I do not get the body of the response.

Here is an example of my php code

try
{
    $conn = new PDO( "sqlsrv:server=$serverName;Database = $database", $uid, $pwd);
    $conn->setAttribute( PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION );
    return $conn;
}

catch( PDOException $e )
{
    $response->status(500);
    echo( "Connection Error: " . $e->getMessage() );
}

If I use a simple rest client this is an example of a response body.

Connection Error: SQLSTATE[08001]: [Microsoft][SQL Server Native Client 11.0]SQL Server Network Interfaces: Error Locating Server/Instance Specified [xFFFFFFFF]. 

However this seems to be the only response I can get from AFNetworking

Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=3840 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (Cocoa error 3840.)" (JSON text did not start with array or object and option to allow fragments not set.) UserInfo=0x15e58fa0 {NSDebugDescription=JSON text did not start with array or object and option to allow fragments not set.}

This is the part of my objective-c code that does this.

...} failure:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, NSError *error) {

        NSLog(@"%@",error.description);

    }];

Is there a way I can get the response body?

Edit: More code for clarification

Below is part of my subclass of AFHTTPSessionManager

@implementation MSMAMobileAPIClient

    + (MSMAMobileAPIClient *)sharedClient {
        static MSMAMobileAPIClient *_sharedClient = nil;
        static dispatch_once_t onceToken;
        dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
            _sharedClient = [[MSMAMobileAPIClient alloc] initWithDefaultURL];
        });

        return _sharedClient;
    }

    - (id)initWithDefaultURL {
        return [self initWithBaseURL:[NSURL URLWithString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"https://%@/mamobile/index.php/" ,[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] stringForKey:@"serviceIPAddress"]]]];
    }

    - (id)initWithBaseURL:(NSURL *)url {

        self = [super initWithBaseURL:url];
        if (!self) {
            return nil;
        }
        self.responseSerializer = [AFCompoundResponseSerializer compoundSerializerWithResponseSerializers:@[[AFJSONResponseSerializer serializer], [AFHTTPResponseSerializer serializer]]];

        return self;
    }

I tried setting the response serializer to a AFCompoundResponseSerializer but it didn't seem to make a difference

Below is an example of a subclass that I call the Librarian.

-(void)searchForItemWithString:(NSString *)searchString withCompletionBlock:(arrayBlock)block {

    self.inventorySearchBlock = block;

    NSDictionary *parameters = @{@"query": searchString};

    [[MSMAMobileAPIClient sharedClient] GET:@"inventory/search" parameters:parameters success:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, id responseObject) {

        if (!responseObject) {
            NSLog(@"Error parsing JSON");
        } else {
            //do stuff with the json dictionary that's returned..
        }

    } failure:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, NSError *error) {

        NSLog(@"Error: %@",error.description);

    }];

}

Answer 1

UPDATE: I have created a github repository to contain the latest code I am using. All changes will be posted there. https://github.com/Hackmodford/HMFJSONResponseSerializerWithData

The answer comes from this issue on github. https://github.com/AFNetworking/AFNetworking/issues/1397

gfiumara is the dev who came up with this. I have only slightly modified his subclass of AFJSONResponseSerializer to include an actual string instead of the NSData

//MSJSONResponseSerializerWithData.h

#import "AFURLResponseSerialization.h"

/// NSError userInfo key that will contain response data
static NSString * const JSONResponseSerializerWithDataKey = @"JSONResponseSerializerWithDataKey";

@interface MSJSONResponseSerializerWithData : AFJSONResponseSerializer

@end

---

//  MSJSONResponseSerializerWithData.m

#import "MSJSONResponseSerializerWithData.h"

@implementation MSJSONResponseSerializerWithData

- (id)responseObjectForResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response
                           data:(NSData *)data
                          error:(NSError *__autoreleasing *)error
{
    if (![self validateResponse:(NSHTTPURLResponse *)response data:data error:error]) {
        if (*error != nil) {
            NSMutableDictionary *userInfo = [(*error).userInfo mutableCopy];
            userInfo[JSONResponseSerializerWithDataKey] = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
            NSError *newError = [NSError errorWithDomain:(*error).domain code:(*error).code userInfo:userInfo];
            (*error) = newError;
        }

        return (nil);
    }

    return ([super responseObjectForResponse:response data:data error:error]);
}

@end

Here is an example of how I use it in the failure block.

} failure:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, NSError *error) {
        NSLog(@"%@",[error.userInfo objectForKey:@"JSONResponseSerializerWithDataKey"]); 
    }];