UIApplication openURL: does not work with relative URLs

Question

Here is the code:

NSURL *newsUrl = [NSURL URLWithString:@"/Document/News/1593" relativeToURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://exist.ru"]]; // Outputs "http://exist.ru/Document/News/1593" NSLog(@"%@", [newsUrl absoluteString]); // works [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:[newsUrl absoluteString]]]; // doesn't work //[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:newsUrl]; 

Is this an Apple bug?

Answer 1

in my Xcode output for NSLog(@"NEW %@", newsUrl) , where I declare newUrl as

 NSURL *newsUrl = [NSURL URLWithString:@"/Document/News/1593" relativeToURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://exist.ru"]]: 

NSLog output

/Document/News/1593 -- http://exist.ru

but for [newsUrl absoluteString]

NSLog output

http://exist.ru/Document/News/1593

So, I assume that [URLWithString: relativeToURL:] provides you with a URL in a different format. This is the reason your result is invalid.

Answer 2

It seems no longer a problem in iOS 9.x.

iOS 9.x, add this surprisingly useless step before calling openURL:

 //Construct your relative URL NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"path/to/whatever" relativeToURL: [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.example.com"]]; //FIX url = [NSURL URLWithString:url.absoluteString]; 

Answer 3

It's not entirely clear what you are trying to accomplish, but if you want to programmatically build your URL with potentially different hosts or paths, why not something like this:

 NSURL *newsUrl = [NSURL URLWithString: [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@",@"http://exist.ru",@"/Document/News/1593"]]; [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:newsUrl];