Detect Character Tapped in UITextView

Question

I'm using the below code to detect words tapped in a UITextView. This works fine, but I want to detect some special characters, like a ?. ? doesn't show up as part of a word when using UITextGranularityWord and I can't seem to get it to show up when using UITextGranularityCharacter either.

How can I detect taps on single special characters such as the ??

-(NSString*)getWordAtPosition:(CGPoint)pos inTextView:(UITextView*)_tv
{
    //eliminate scroll offset
    pos.y += _tv.contentOffset.y;

    //get location in text from textposition at point
    UITextPosition *tapPos = [_tv closestPositionToPoint:pos];

    //fetch the word at this position (or nil, if not available)
    UITextRange * wr = [_tv.tokenizer rangeEnclosingPosition:tapPos withGranularity:UITextGranularityWord inDirection:UITextLayoutDirectionRight];

    if ([_tv textInRange:wr].length == 0) {//i.e. it's not a word

        NSLog(@"is 0 length, check for characters (e.g. ?)");

        UITextRange *ch = [_tv.tokenizer rangeEnclosingPosition:tapPos withGranularity:UITextGranularityCharacter inDirection:UITextLayoutDirectionRight];

        NSLog(@"ch range: %@ ch text: %@",ch, [_tv textInRange:ch] ); // logs: ch range: (null) ch text: 

        if ([[_tv textInRange:ch] isEqualToString:@"?"]) {
            return [_tv textInRange:ch];
        }
    }

    return [_tv textInRange:wr];
}

You can try this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5091851/how-to-detect-space-and-special-characters-like-etc-in-text-of-a-text — Nico, Sep 09 '13 at 19:06
I'm not sure how that would work - if my function to return the tapped character can't return the `?`, how can I use `NSCharacterSet`? I don't want to check if a `?` exists in the string, but only if it exists in the location that the user taps. — glenstorey, Sep 12 '13 at 17:41
Ok I misundestood sorry. You want to get the character which is tapped in your textView, right? I tested you code, that works for the "?", you can use the same way to test all the special character? — Nico, Sep 12 '13 at 18:31
That's really odd - because I can't get it to detect special characters that are part of a word: `foo?` becomes `foo` or that are by themselves `?`. It just returns an empty NSRange and string. I'm using the GM, perhaps this is a bug? — glenstorey, Sep 15 '13 at 17:58
See also [Detecting taps on attributed text in a UITextView in iOS](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19332283/detecting-taps-on-attributed-text-in-a-uitextview-in-ios/) — Suragch, Jan 22 '16 at 04:53

James Kuang · Answer 1 · 2013-12-18T17:50:25.663

This code worked for me on iOS 6:

    - (void)tappedTextView:(UITapGestureRecognizer *)recognizer {
        UITextView *textView = (UITextView *)recognizer.view;
        CGPoint location = [recognizer locationInView:textView];
        UITextPosition *tapPosition = [textView closestPositionToPoint:location];
        UITextRange *textRange = [textView.tokenizer rangeEnclosingPosition:tapPosition withGranularity:UITextGranularityCharacter inDirection:UITextLayoutDirectionRight];        
        NSString *character = [textView textInRange:textRange];
        NSLog(@"%@", character);
    }

Detect Character Tapped in UITextView

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