Use RegEx or NSScanner in Obj-C to convert newline characters to html bullets

Question

My app accesses a poor web service that returns output like this:

Title\n\nInfo1\nInfo2\nInfo3\n ...

To clarify, the text is not literally ..., and the info is not literally numbered, I just wanted to show that they are distinct.

I want to display it in a UIWebView like this:

<p><b>Title</b><ul><li>Info1</li><li>Info2</li><li>Info3</li></ul></p>

How can I accomplish this using either NSRegularExpression or NSScanner? I am confused about NSRegularExpression both because I do not know the correct expression to use, and I'm not sure how I access the results to place it in a neat formatted string.

Naively, the logic would be something like this:

1. Find all text between char 0 and first (only) occurrence of \n\n, and fit that into format @"<p><b>%@</b><ul>",matchedString
2. While there is still text, find all text between current char and next occurrence of \n (single) and fit into format @"<li>%@</li>"
3. When there are no \n left, append @"</ul></p>" and call it a day.

Please advise on how I can implement this logic, or alternatively encode it in a regular expression.

Answer implemented

I just wanted to post my makeshift implementation of the answer in case anybody in the future get stuck:

NSArray *parts = [self.dogFoodBenefits componentsSeparatedByString:@"\n"];
NSString *benefitsString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"<h4>Benefits</h4><b>%@</b><p><ul>",[parts objectAtIndex:0]];
for (int i = 2; i < [parts count]; i++) {
    if ([[parts objectAtIndex:i] length] > 1)
        benefitsString = [benefitsString stringByAppendingFormat:@"<li>%@</li>",[parts objectAtIndex:i]];
}
benefitsString = [benefitsString stringByAppendingString:@"</ul></p>"];

Answer 1

I think you'd have easier time simply splitting the string at \n\n using componentsSeparatedByString: method:

NSArray *parts = [webTextStr componentsSeparatedByString:@"\n\n"];
// Use the initial or the only element inside <b></b> tag
// Put the remaining elements, if any, in the <li></li> tags

Answer 2

you could use the method -[NSString componentsSeparatedByString:] to get what you want as an array of strings.