vertical pipe symbol not being detected in NSURL

Question

I'm trying to place a search in google dictionary but the url contains a vertical pipe/bar | My code just fails to load the site

 //http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&q=test+test+test&hl=en


if ([mySearchEngineName isEqualToString:@"Google Dictionary"]){
        NSLog(@"Currently searching %@ using %@", mySearchString, mySearchEngineName); 

        NSString *mutateSearchString = [mySearchString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@"+"];
        NSString *searchURL =[NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&q=%@&hl=en", mutateSearchString];
        NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:searchURL];
        [webBrowser loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url]];
    }

using %7C did not work either..

NSString *searchURL =[NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en%7Cen&q=%@&hl=en", mutateSearchString];

Answer 1

Consider encoding your URL using something like:

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:[searchURL stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding]]; 

rather than manually doing it yourself. Perhaps there is some characters in your mySearchString NSString that also needs encoding. Run this encoding after you have stringWithFormat'd the full URL together.