Reputation: 12674

Add a Text Link to a TextView

Is it possible to add a text link into a TextView? I want the link to perhaps behave like a button, where I can assign an action to it.

EDIT: When I say assign an action, I mean actually giving it something in the code. I'm wondering if it's possible to dynamically add a "button" into text that I can assign a coded action to.

Live scenario

Think of something like a dictionary app. Maybe the definition of one word uses another word that you might not know the definition of, so being able to click on that word to instantly search it rather than having to type it in would be a nice user friendly feature. It seems rather unlikely, though, I guess.

Upvotes: 1

Answers (5)

Susu

Reputation: 1

What about CoreText? It Can draw many kinds of Text .

Upvotes: 0

Jared Egan

Reputation: 1278

I would recommend using NIAttributedLabel from Nimbus, an open source iOS library. You can specify text ranges that are links, and you get delegate messages sent when a user taps on it.

Main Nimbus site: http://nimbuskit.info/

NIAttributedLabel docs: http://docs.nimbuskit.info/interface_n_i_attributed_label.html

Upvotes: 1

atomkirk

Reputation: 3801

I know of a way, but its a LOT of work. First, you have an NSAttributedString that you have the text view display. Second, attribute the range of text you want to be the button. Third, assign a tap gesture recognizer to the text view and in the method called by the recognizer, you'll use core text to determine if the tap happened over the range of text that represents the buttons.

Heres how youll use core text: create a framesetter with the attributed string. Create a frame from the framsetter with the shape of a square that is the frame of the text view, inset by the padding of the text view. The frame will allow you to get the y origins of every line in the text view and and once you know what line the tap happened on, you can use the line to then figure out exactly what character was tapped on that line by giving it an x offset. Once you know character index on the line, you can add it to the beginning of the range of the line and get the index of the character within the whole string. Then you can check if its within the range of the text that is your button. If it is, you can then call a method to simulate a target action type behavior.

Ive explained the process of how to accomplish this and specified what kinds of core text objects youll need, ill let you look up the specific api details:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Carbon/Reference/CoreText_Framework_Ref/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40005304

You can also use my objc core text wrapper: https://github.com/mysterioustrousers/MYSCoreText

Upvotes: 0