Last month I noted that Swift 2 had not yet dropped its Objective-C origins when it came to retrieving website text. Fortunately, Swift 3 has great advances in this area. Getting source of a webpage is now a simple and straightforwards process…

let url:NSURL = NSURL(string: "http://ebscer.com")!
do
{
    let responseText:String = try String(contentsOf:url,
                            encoding:String.Encoding.utf8)
}
catch let error
{
    print("Error: \(error)")
}

Update: This process has been simplified for Swift 3

Loading the text of a webpage in Swift has not completely dropped its Objective-C origins, which makes the process a little bit less obvious than it should be. Fortunately it is only a few lines…

let url:NSURL = NSURL(string: "http://ebscer.com")!
let request:NSURLRequest = NSURLRequest(URL: url)
NSURLConnection.sendAsynchronousRequest(request, 
    queue: NSOperationQueue(),
    completionHandler: { (response:NSURLResponse?,
        data: NSData? error: NSError?) -> Void in
            let responseText:String = String(data: data!,
                encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding)!
            print(responseText)
    })

You may also need to edit your plist file to whitelist the domain.