How to pass touch from a UITextView to a UITableViewCell

Question

I have a UITextView in a custom UITableViewCell. The textview works properly (scrolls, shows text, etc.) but I need the users to be able to tap the table cell and go to another screen. Right now, if you tap the edges of the table cell (i.e. outside the UItextView) the next view is properly called. But clearly inside the uitextview the touches are being captured and not forwarded to the table cell.

I found a post that talked about subclassing UITextView to forward the touches. I tried that without luck. The implementation is below. I'm wondering if maybe a) the super of my textview isn't the uitableviewcell and thus I need to pass the touch some other way or b) If the super is the uitableviewcell if I need to pass something else? Any help would be much appreciated.

#import "ScrollableTextView.h"

@implementation ScrollableTextView

- (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (parentScrollView) {
        [parentScrollView touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event];
    }
    [super touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event];
}

- (void)touchesCancelled:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (parentScrollView) {
        [parentScrollView touchesCancelled:touches withEvent:event];
    }
    [super touchesCancelled:touches withEvent:event];
}

- (void)touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (parentScrollView) {
        [parentScrollView touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
    }
    [super touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
}

- (void)touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (parentScrollView) {
        [parentScrollView touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event];
    }
    [super touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event];
}

- (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder {
    return YES;
}

@end

Answer 1

Try [theTextView setUserInteractionEnabled:NO]; If the user needs to be able to edit the contents of the TextView, then you might have a design problem here.

Swift 3 : theTextView.isUserInteractionEnabled = false

Storyboard : tick the "User Interaction Enabled" checkbox.

Answer 2

I know that this question has been asked 5 years ago, but the behaviour is still very much needed for some app to have a clickable Cell with UIDataDetectors.

So here's the UITextView subclass I made up to fit this particular behaviour in a UITableView

-(id) initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame {
    self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
    if (self) {
        self.delegate = self;
    }
    return self;
}

- (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder {
    return NO;
}

- (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    UIView *obj = self;

    do {
        obj = obj.superview;
    } while (![obj isKindOfClass:[UITableViewCell class]]);
    UITableViewCell *cell = (UITableViewCell*)obj;

    do {
        obj = obj.superview;
    } while (![obj isKindOfClass:[UITableView class]]);
    UITableView *tableView = (UITableView*)obj;

    NSIndexPath *indePath = [tableView indexPathForCell:cell];
    [[tableView delegate] tableView:tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:indePath];
}

- (BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldInteractWithURL:(NSURL *)URL inRange:(NSRange)characterRange {
    return YES;
}

You can modify this to fit your needs...

Hope it helps someone.

Answer 3

The problem with your solution is that if you put UITextView inside UITableViewCell, its superview won't be the actual cell. There's even a slight difference between iOS 7 and iOS 8 on the cell's view structure. What you need to do is drill down (or drill up) through the hierarchy to get UITableViewCell instance.

I am using and modifying @TheSquad's while loop to get the UITableViewCell, and assign it to a property. Then override those touch methods, use the cell's touches method whenever needed, and just use super's touch method's implementations to get the default behaviour.

// set the cell as property
@property (nonatomic, assign) UITableViewCell *superCell;

- (UITableViewCell *)superCell {
    if (!_superCell) {
        UIView *object = self;

        do {
            object = object.superview;
        } while (![object isKindOfClass:[UITableViewCell class]] && (object != nil));

        if (object) {
            _superCell = (UITableViewCell *)object;
        }
    }

    return _superCell;
}

#pragma mark - Touch overrides

- (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (self.superCell) {
        [self.superCell touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event];
    } else {
        [super touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event];
    }
}

- (void)touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (self.superCell) {
        [self.superCell touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event];
    } else {
        [super touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event];
    }
}

- (void)touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (self.superCell) {
        [self.superCell touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
    } else {
        [super touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
    }
}

- (void)touchesCancelled:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (self.superCell) {
        [self.superCell touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
    } else {
        [super touchesCancelled:touches withEvent:event];
    }

}

Answer 4

The answers above don't solve the problem if you have links in the UITextView and want them to work as usual when user taps a link, and pass the tap to the cell if user taps regular text. With the proposed method cell will be "selected" in both cases.

Here are some possible solutions:

1. https://stackoverflow.com/a/59010352/11448489 - add a tap gesture recognizer to the cell, and set it to require UITextInteractionNameLinkTap recognizer failure. The problem is that UITextInteractionNameLinkTap string is from internal Apple API and can change. Also, we still have to directly call delegate's didSelectRowAtIndexPath, so the cell won't be animated.

2. Implement override of touchesEnded in the text view. In it perform some selector after delay of at least 0.4s. In the text view delegate cancel this perform request if an interaction with url happened:

class TappableTextView: UITextView, UITextViewDelegate {

    var tapHandler: (() -> Void)?

    override var delegate: UITextViewDelegate? {
        get { self }
        set { }
    }

    override func touchesEnded(_ touches: Set<UITouch>, with event: UIEvent?) {
        self.perform(#selector(onTap), with: nil, afterDelay: 0.5)
    }

    func textView(_ textView: UITextView, shouldInteractWith URL: URL, in characterRange: NSRange, interaction: UITextItemInteraction) -> Bool {
        Self.cancelPreviousPerformRequests(withTarget: self, selector: #selector(onTap), object: nil)
        return true
    }

    @objc func onTap() {
        self.tapHandler?()
    }
}

It works, but delay is noticeable and annoying. It is not possible to reduce this delay because shouldInteractWith happens after 350ms after touchesEnded. And we still have to call didSelectRowAtIndexPath.

3. I came to another solution, which seems to work perfectly if you need clickable links, but no other interactions (not scrollable, selectable etc). Essentially, we need to make the text view ignore all touches which are not in the links area:

class TapPassingTextView: UITextView, UITextViewDelegate {

    var clickableRects = [CGRect]()

    override func layoutSubviews() {
        super.layoutSubviews()
        self.updateClickableRects()
    }

    override func hitTest(_ point: CGPoint, with event: UIEvent?) -> UIView? {
        clickableRects.contains { $0.contains(point) } ? super.hitTest(point, with: event) : nil
    }

    private func updateClickableRects() {
        self.clickableRects = []
        let range = NSRange(location: 0, length: self.attributedText.string.count)
        self.attributedText.enumerateAttribute(.link, in: range) { link, range, _ in
            guard link != nil else { return }
            self.layoutManager.enumerateLineFragments(forGlyphRange: range) { rect, _, _, _, _ in
                self.clickableRects.append(rect)
            }
        }
    }
}

That's it! Taps on links are working and taps in other areas go below the text view, cells are selected natively.