[CB-9485] processOpenURL shortens long URLs with ellipsis

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 3.7.0
• Component/s: cordova-ios
• Labels: cordova-ios-4.0.x processOpenURL

Environment

iOS

• Assignee: Jesse MacFadyen
• Reporter: Tom Brückner
• Created: 12/Aug/15 20:36
• Updated: 23/Aug/18 07:09
• Resolved: 04/Sep/15 05:11

Description

I'm building a hybrid app and wanted to use the openProcessURL() mechanism to transfer data from the native side to the webapp. The data consists of a rather large string.

Here I noticed, that this URL will get shortened using an ellipsis (...) and thus not transfered correctly to the webapp.

I tracked the problem down to its root cause. The problem is that NSURL automatically shortens URLs if you are just converting it into a string. This "feature" is also described here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30764851/nsurl-urlwithstring-is-shortening-very-long-strings-with-an-ellipsis-crea

Cordova iOS uses this kind of direct string conversion before the URL is handed over to the native side. In Cordova 3.7.0 (which I'm using), this happens in CDVViewController.m (processOpenURL). In the latest Cordova development branch, the same happens in CDVHandleOpenURL.m (handleOpenURL).

In both cases, the errorneous conversion / shortening is a side-effect of the call to [NSString stringWithFormat], where the NSURL is handed over as a string. This causes ellipsis generation.

As described in the stack overflow question linked above, the problem does not occur if the parts of the URL (e.g. the path or the query) are converted seperately, and I can confirm that.

To fix the problem, you can replace

NSString* jsString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"if (typeof handleOpenURL === 'function')

{ handleOpenURL(\"%@\");}", url];

with

NSString* jsString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"if (typeof handleOpenURL === 'function') { handleOpenURL("%@");}

", url.absoluteString];

The .absoluteString retrieves the unaltered URL, this patch worked for me.

Issue Links

• is related to: CB-9279 the param size limit from js to ios native