Passing a tabelview indexPath.row as String to VC WebView - objective-c

Question

I have a TableViewController which I am attempting to pass through a URL to a WebView on another ViewController
I am overriding the below function, which works find if I make the URL static as you can see in the comment out let newsLink constant
let newsLink = "http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/69108799/Kirkcaldie-Stains-department-store-to-become-David-Jones"
However with the below pulling the URL from indexPath.row it fails for some reason and passes through a nil value
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, didSelectRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath){
let newsLink = (posts.objectAtIndex(indexPath.row).valueForKey("link") as! String)
//let newsLink = "http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/69108799/Kirkcaldie-Stains-department-store-to-become-David-Jones"
println(newsLink)
let newsWebViewController = UIStoryboard(name: "Main", bundle: nil).instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("idNewsWebViewController") as! NewsWebViewController
newsWebViewController.newsURL = NSURL(string: newsLink)
showDetailViewController(newsWebViewController, sender: self)
}
If I println() the below, I get exactly the same output as the URL I ahve hardcoded in the test let newsLink constant
println(posts.objectAtIndex(indexPath.row).valueForKey("link") as! String)
I can't figure out why this is failing. Hopefully someone smarter than me can help.
The code on the receiving end VC is below"
var newsURL : NSURL!
//var newsURL = NSURL(string: "http://www.google.co.nz")
#IBOutlet weak var newsWebView: UIWebView!
#IBOutlet weak var descTextView: UITextView!
and in the viewDidAppear function
let request : NSURLRequest = NSURLRequest(URL: newsURL!)
newsWebView.loadRequest(request)
More Info
var types
var posts = NSMutableArray()
var elements = NSMutableDictionary()
how I am adding objects
elements.setObject(urlLink, forKey: "link")
posts.addObject(elements)

Answer 1

Could you show the declaration / structure of the "posts" variable?
Without more information, the only thing I can think of is that the value of "link" is not actually a String, but something (maybe a NSURL) that when printed shows that content. That would explain the println showing the same url but the cast failing.
When you print, or implicitly convert any object to a String (as in the println), it calls the "description" method of that object.
For example:
class MyURLContainer {
var link:String
override func description() -> String {
return link
}
}
let url = MyURLContainer()
let url.link = "http://www.example.com"
println( "my link: \(url)" ) // this would show the link correctly
let link = url as? String // this will be nil, as url can't be casted to String

Answer 2

I think (posts.objectAtIndex(indexPath.row).valueForKey("link") does not return a String type. It might already be a NSURL, and hence showing you correct value in println()
Could you post some more details about it. Hope this helped.

Answer 3

It turns out it was the encoding on the URL that NSURL didn't like.
The solution was to use the below:
var escapedString = originalString.stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)
I'm new to swift, but this seems a bit messy.