Iphone – NSURL with string

You can do it this way (synchronously, but compact):

UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithData:[NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:MyURL]]];

A much better approach is to use Apple's LazyTableImages to preserve interactivity.

If you care only about the trailing slash ambiguity, you can dispense with this question quickly by knowing that NSURL path trims the trailing slash.

But I like the idea of a category method on NSURL that implements some standards-based equivalence ("equivalence" is probably a better term than equality in this case).

@RobNapier refers to a related question with a good answer that points to RFC2616. Another relevant standard for url syntax is RFC1808.

The tough part is deciding what we mean by equivalence, for example, what about differing queries or fragments (anchor links)? The code below errs on the side of permissiveness for most of these ambiguities...

// in NSURL+uriEquivalence.m

- (BOOL)isEquivalent:(NSURL *)aURL {

    if ([self isEqual:aURL]) return YES;
    if ([[self scheme] caseInsensitiveCompare:[aURL scheme]] != NSOrderedSame) return NO;
    if ([[self host] caseInsensitiveCompare:[aURL host]] != NSOrderedSame) return NO;

    // NSURL path is smart about trimming trailing slashes
    // note case-sensitivty here
    if ([[self path] compare:[aURL path]] != NSOrderedSame) return NO;

    // at this point, we've established that the urls are equivalent according to the rfc
    // insofar as scheme, host, and paths match

    // according to rfc2616, port's can weakly match if one is missing and the
    // other is default for the scheme, but for now, let's insist on an explicit match
    if ([self port] || [aURL port]) {
        if (![[self port] isEqual:[aURL port]]) return NO;
        if (![[self query] isEqual:[aURL query]]) return NO;
    }

    // for things like user/pw, fragment, etc., seems sensible to be
    // permissive about these.
    return YES;
}