So I'm trying to load pictures from twitter. If i just use the URL in the json results without encoding, in the dataWithContentsOfURL, I get nil URL argument. If I encode it, I get %0A%20%20%20%20%22http://example.com/example.jpg%22%0A. I know I can use rangeOfString: or stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString: but can I be sure that it will always be the same, is there another way to handle this, and why is this happening to my twitter response and not my instagram response? i have also tried stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet] and it does nothing. this is the url directly from the json... 2013-11-08 22:09:31:812 JaVu[1839:1547] -[SingleEventTableViewController tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:] [Line 406] ( "http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BYWHiq1IYAAwSCR.jpg" ) here is my code if ([post valueForKeyPath:@"entities.media.media_url"]) { NSString *twitterString = [[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@", [post valueForKeyPath:@"entities.media.media_url"]]stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]]; twitterString = [twitterString stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]; NSLog(@"%@", twitterString); if (twitterString != nil){ NSURL *twitterPhotoUrl = [NSURL URLWithString:twitterString]; NSLog(@"%@", twitterPhotoUrl); dispatch_queue_t queue = kBgQueue; dispatch_async(queue, ^{ NSError *error; NSData* data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:twitterPhotoUrl options:NSDataReadingUncached error:&error]; UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithData:data]; dispatch_sync(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{ [streamPhotoArray replaceObjectAtIndex:indexPath.row withObject:image]; cell.instagramPhoto.image = image; }); }); } }