Programming multiline mixed uiview types text

Question

How would I elegantly achieve multiline text that includes a combination of links, plain text, and formatted words? Right now, all I can think of is breaking each word into a token and displaying/positioning it differently (UILabel, UIButton, etc), however, this is terribly inefficient. Here is an example of what I am trying to achieve from the comments feature in Instagram.

Notice, formatted link to user name, indented multiline text, and possibility of inline links to hashtags.

Answer 1

Edit Sep 14

So I was able to implement something very similar using FTCoreTextView It was simple to import/implement. I am using the code as a static library in my ARC project.

The following are the core components:

• I use a method to set the style for my cell's FTCoreTextView

   (NSArray *)getCoreTextStyle{
      NSMutableArray *result = [NSMutableArray array];
  
      FTCoreTextStyle *defaultStyle = [FTCoreTextStyle new];
     defaultStyle.name = FTCoreTextTagDefault;    //though the default name is already set to FTCoreTextTagDefault
     defaultStyle.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica Neue" size:14.f];
     defaultStyle.textAlignment = FTCoreTextAlignementLeft;
     [result addObject:defaultStyle];
  
  
         FTCoreTextStyle *linkStyle = [defaultStyle copy];
     linkStyle.name = FTCoreTextTagLink;
     linkStyle.color = [UIColor blueColor];//[del colorWithHexString:@"3aa98"];
         linkStyle.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica Neue" size:14.f];
      [result addObject:linkStyle];
  
          return  result;
   }
  

• Then in your cell you would set the text for the view, assign a delegate, etc. (My FTCoreTextView overrides a plain IBOutlet for a UIView)

  [myFTTView setDelegate:self];
  [myFTTView addStyles:[self getCoreTextStyle]];
  [myFTTView setText:[self parseLinks:text]];
  [myFTTView setNeedsDisplay];
  

• Parse links is a method i separately define to search for hashtags and usernames and then set a style when they are found (this code is rough and leaves much to be improved. I am considering switching to CoreTextHyperlink which already has code search for hashtags and @usernames.)

  -(NSString *) parseLinks: (NSString *)cap{
     NSArray *split = [cap componentsSeparatedByString:@" "];
     NSMutableArray *words = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithArray:split];
  
        for (NSString *word in split){
  
           if([word hasPrefix:@"#"] || [word hasPrefix:@"@"]){
  
              NSString *reformat = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@|%@%@", hashlink,word, word, endhashlink];
              [words replaceObjectAtIndex:[split indexOfObject:word] withObject:reformat];
          }
  
      }
      return [words componentsJoinedByString:@" "];
  }
  

• Last but not least, the method called after a tag/username is clicked

  - (void)coreTextView:(FTCoreTextView *)acoreTextView receivedTouchOnData:(NSDictionary *)data {
  
      NSString *key = [data objectForKey:@"url"];
      if([key hasPrefix:@"#"]){
         //do something for tag
      }
     else{
        //do something for user.
     }
  
     return;
  
     }
  

Answer 2

Two ways I can think of:

• use CoreText with NSAttributedStrings. Difficult to achieve, especially for the links (you'll have to register a listener somewhere, compute on which "link" you "clicked", ...), but provides the best performance.
• use a UIWebView and write the HTML on-the-fly. Less performant, but much more flexible.