Sending hex string as data to server using AFNetworking 2

Question

Let's say this is the CURL which works:

curl -s -d 726240786C722E6E6574FE3765653035356338636463616236323263383065353339616461643963643561 http://support.questprojects.com/portal/bukd.aspx?action=LOGIN

Where "726240786C722E6E6574FE3765653035356338636463616236323263383065353339616461643963643561" is hex string. How to make this with AFNetworking 2.0? Tried everything, but without success...

My best effort:

AFHTTPRequestOperationManager *manager = [AFHTTPRequestOperationManager manager];
manager.responseSerializer = [AFJSONResponseSerializer serializer];

NSString *url = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@?action=LOGIN", @"http://support.questprojects.com/portal/bukd.aspx"];

NSData *postBody = [self base64DataFromString:@"726240786C722E6E6574FE3765653035356338636463616236323263383065353339616461643963643561"];
[manager POST:url parameters:nil constructingBodyWithBlock:^(id<AFMultipartFormData> formData) {
    [formData appendPartWithFileData:postBody name:@"" fileName:@"" mimeType:@""];
} success:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id responseObject) {
    NSLog(@"Success: %@", responseObject);
} failure:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error) {
    NSLog(@"Error: %@", error);
}];



- (NSData *)nsdataFromHexString: (NSString *)string
{
    NSString *command = [string 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];
    }
    return commandToSend;
}

Answer 1

Do not Base64 encode the hex string, just convert to NSData :

NSString *hexString = @"726240786C722E6E6574FE3765653035356338636463616236323263383065353339616461643963643561";
NSData *postData = [hexString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

POST data does not need to be Base64 encoded.

Here is a complete working example but not using AFNetworking because I am not conversant in it:

NSString *hexString = @"726240786C722E6E6574FE3765653035356338636463616236323263383065353339616461643963643561";
NSData *postData = [hexString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://support.questprojects.com/portal/bukd.aspx?action=LOGIN"];
NSMutableURLRequest *urlRequest = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[urlRequest setHTTPBody:postData];
[urlRequest setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
NSURLResponse *urlResponse;
NSError *error;
NSData *data = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:urlRequest returningResponse:&urlResponse error:&error];

NSLog(@"data (hex): %@", data);
NSLog(@"data (string): %@", [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]);

NSLog output:

data (hex): <7b227375 63636573 73223a74 7275657d>
data (string): {"success":true}

Note: By all means use AFNetworking, it is great! I just know the older OSX/iOS methods by heart and I did not have a project that already had AFNetworking installed.