NSURL baseURL returns nil. Any other way to get the actual base URL

Question

I think I don't understand the concept of "baseURL". This:

NSLog(@"BASE URL: %@ %@", [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.google.es"], [[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.google.es"] baseURL]);

Prints this:

BASE URL: http://www.google.es (null)

And of course, in the Apple docs I read this:

Return Value The base URL of the receiver. If the receiver is an absolute URL, returns nil.

I'd like to get from this example URL:

https://www.google.es/search?q=uiviewcontroller&aq=f&oq=uiviewcontroller&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

This base URL

https://www.google.es

My question is simple. Is there any cleaner way of getting the actual base URL without concatenating the scheme and the hostname? I mean, what's the purpose of base URL then?

Answer 1

Docs for BaseURL.

baseURL
Returns the base URL of the receiver.

- (NSURL *)baseURL
Return Value
The base URL of the receiver. If the receiver is an absolute URL, returns nil.

Availability
Available in iOS 2.0 and later.
Declared In
NSURL.h

Seems it only works for relative URLs.

You could possibly use ...

NSArray *pathComponents = [url pathComponents]

and then take the bits you want.

Or try...

NSString *host = [url host];