NSString containsString crashes

Question

I'm trying to filter an array according to one of it's string fields.

Both nameLower and filterLower has NSString value inside, and yet i keep getting:

__NSCFString containsString:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7f876b79e160

-(void) filterFriendsArray:(NSString*)filter {
    [_filteredFriendsArray removeAllObjects];
    for (FacebookUser* user in _friendsArray)
    {
        NSString* nameLower = [user.user.name lowercaseString];
        NSString* filterLower = [filter lowercaseString];
        if ([nameLower containsString:filterLower])
            [_filteredFriendsArray addObject:user];
    }
    _displayedFriendsArray = _filteredFriendsArray;
}

Answer 1

If you want your code to work on iOS 7 as well as iOS 8 you should use one of the rangeOfString calls instead. Basically if the range returned has a length of zero, the substring is not there.

/* These methods return length==0 if the target string is not found. So, to check for containment: ([str rangeOfString:@"target"].length > 0).  Note that the length of the range returned by these methods might be different than the length of the target string, due composed characters and such.
*/
- (NSRange)rangeOfString:(NSString *)aString;
- (NSRange)rangeOfString:(NSString *)aString options:(NSStringCompareOptions)mask;
- (NSRange)rangeOfString:(NSString *)aString options:(NSStringCompareOptions)mask range:(NSRange)searchRange;
- (NSRange)rangeOfString:(NSString *)aString options:(NSStringCompareOptions)mask range:(NSRange)searchRange locale:(NSLocale *)locale NS_AVAILABLE(10_5, 2_0);

Obviously it's trivial to implement containsString yourself in a category using rangeOfString:

@implementation NSString (Contains)

- (BOOL)myContainsString:(NSString*)other {
  NSRange range = [self rangeOfString:other];
  return range.length != 0;
}

@end

Answer 2

compare rangeOfString with NSNotFound

NSRange range = [self rangeOfString:other];
if(range.location != NSNotFound){
    //do something
}

Answer 3

Use following:

if (![[NSString class] respondsToSelector:@selector(containsString)])
     {
         //ios 7
         NSRange range = [mystring rangeOfString:other];
         if(range.location != NSNotFound){
           //do something
         }
     }
     else  //for iOS 8 
     {
          if ([mystring containsString: other])
          {
              //do something
          }                             
     }