Convert hex data string to NSData in Objective C (cocoa)

Question

fairly new iPhone developer here. Building an app to send RS232 commands to a device expecting them over a TCP/IP socket connection. I've got the comms part down, and can send ASCII commands fine. It's the hex code commands I'm having trouble with.

So lets say I have the following hex data to send (in this format):

\x1C\x02d\x00\x00\x00\xFF\x7F

How do I convert this into an NSData object, which my send method expects?

Obviously this does not work for this hex data (but does for standard ascii commands):

NSString *commandascii;
NSData *commandToSend;
commandascii = @"\x1C\x02d\x00\x00\x00\xFF\x7F";
commandToSend = [commandascii dataUsingEncoding:NSStringEncoding];

For a start, some of the \x hex codes are escape characters, and I get an "input conversion stopped..." warning when compiling in XCode. And NSStringEncoding obviously isn't right for this hex string either.

So the first problem is how to store this hex string I guess, then how to convert to NSData.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Code for hex in NSStrings like "00 05 22 1C EA 01 00 FF". 'command' is the hex NSString.

command = [command stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""];
NSMutableData *commandToSend= [[NSMutableData alloc] init];
unsigned char whole_byte;
char byte_chars[3] = {'\0','\0','\0'};
for (int i = 0; i < ([command length] / 2); i++) {
    byte_chars[0] = [command characterAtIndex:i*2];
    byte_chars[1] = [command characterAtIndex:i*2+1];
    whole_byte = strtol(byte_chars, NULL, 16);
    [commandToSend appendBytes:&whole_byte length:1]; 
}
NSLog(@"%@", commandToSend);

Answer 2

Here's an example decoder implemented on a category on NSString.

#import <stdio.h>
#import <stdlib.h>
#import <string.h>

unsigned char strToChar (char a, char b)
{
    char encoder[3] = {'\0','\0','\0'};
    encoder[0] = a;
    encoder[1] = b;
    return (char) strtol(encoder,NULL,16);
}

@interface NSString (NSStringExtensions)
- (NSData *) decodeFromHexidecimal;
@end

@implementation NSString (NSStringExtensions)

- (NSData *) decodeFromHexidecimal;
{
    const char * bytes = [self cStringUsingEncoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];
    NSUInteger length = strlen(bytes);
    unsigned char * r = (unsigned char *) malloc(length / 2 + 1);
    unsigned char * index = r;

    while ((*bytes) && (*(bytes +1))) {
        *index = strToChar(*bytes, *(bytes +1));
        index++;
        bytes+=2;
    }
    *index = '\0';

    NSData * result = [NSData dataWithBytes: r length: length / 2];
    free(r);

    return result;
}

@end

Answer 3

If you can hard code the hex data:

const char bytes[] = "\x00\x12\x45\xAB";
size_t length = (sizeof bytes) - 1; //string literals have implicit trailing '\0'

NSData *data = [NSData dataWithBytes:bytes length:length];

If your code must interpret the hex string (assuming the hex string is in a variable called inputData and lengthOfInputData is the length of inputData):

#define HexCharToNybble(x) ((char)((x > '9') ? tolower(x) - 'a' + 10 : x - '0') & 0xF)

int i;

NSMutableData *data = [NSMutableData data];

for (i = 0; i < lengthOfInputData;)
{
    char byteToAppend;

    if (i < (lengthOfInputData - 3) &&
        inputData[i+0] == '\\' &&
        inputData[i+1] == 'x' &&
        isxdigit(inputData[i+2]) &&
        isxdigit(inputData[i+3]))
    {
        byteToAppend = HexCharToNybble(inputData[i+2]) << 4 + HexCharToNybble(input[i+3]);
        i += 4;
    }
    else
    {
        byteToAppend = inputData[i];
        i += 1;
    }

    [data appendBytes:&byteToAppend length:1];
}

Answer 4

This is an old topic, but I'd like to add some remarks.

• Scanning a string with [NSString characterAtIndex] is not very efficient. Get the C string in UTF8, then scan it using a *char++ is much faster.

• It's better to allocate NSMutableData with capacity, to avoid time consuming block resizing. I think NSData is even better ( see next point )

• Instead of create NSData using malloc, then [NSData dataWithBytes] and finally free, use malloc, and [NSData dataWithBytesNoCopy:length:freeWhenDone:]

It also avoids memory operation ( reallocate, copy, free ). The freeWhenDone boolean tells the NSData to take ownership of the memory block, and free it when it will be released.

• Here is the function I have to convert hex strings to bytes blocks. There is not much error checking on input string, but the allocation is tested.

The formatting of the input string ( like remove 0x, spaces and punctuation marks ) is better out of the conversion function. Why would we lose some time doing extra processing if we are sure the input is OK.

+(NSData*)bytesStringToData:(NSString*)bytesString
{
    if (!bytesString || !bytesString.length) return NULL;
    // Get the c string
    const char *scanner=[bytesString cStringUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
    char twoChars[3]={0,0,0};
    long bytesBlockSize = formattedBytesString.length/2;
    long counter = bytesBlockSize;
    Byte *bytesBlock = malloc(bytesBlockSize);
    if (!bytesBlock) return NULL;
    Byte *writer = bytesBlock;
    while (counter--) {
        twoChars[0]=*scanner++;
        twoChars[1]=*scanner++;
        *writer++ = strtol(twoChars, NULL, 16);
    }
    return[NSData dataWithBytesNoCopy:bytesBlock length:bytesBlockSize freeWhenDone:YES];
}