String with multilpe attributes in swift

Question

I am working on an app on which i had to make the text in a UITextView bold or italic or underlined. So i came up with this solution to make the selected range from the textView bold. The same way i can make it italic and but not underlined, don't know how.

   //MARK: Bold Bar Button

    func boldBarButtonClicked(sender : UIBarButtonItem)
    {
        if let selectedTextRange = self.textView.selectedTextRange
        {
            let beginningOfDocument = self.textView.beginningOfDocument

            let startingPoint  = self.textView.offsetFromPosition(beginningOfDocument, toPosition: selectedTextRange.start)
            let selectedTextLength = self.textView.offsetFromPosition(selectedTextRange.start, toPosition: selectedTextRange.end)

            let dict : Dictionary<String, AnyObject> = self.textView.textStorage.attributesAtIndex(startingPoint, effectiveRange: nil)

            if let currentFont = dict[NSFontAttributeName] as? UIFont
            {
                let fontDescriptor = currentFont.fontDescriptor()
                let changedFontDescriptor = fontDescriptor.fontDescriptorWithSymbolicTraits(UIFontDescriptorSymbolicTraits.TraitBold)
                let updatedFont = UIFont(descriptor: changedFontDescriptor, size: 0.0)
                let updatedDict = [NSFontAttributeName : updatedFont ]
                self.textView.textStorage.beginEditing()

                let selectedNSRange = NSMakeRange(startingPoint, selectedTextLength)

                self.textView.textStorage.setAttributes(updatedDict, range: selectedNSRange)
                self.textView.textStorage.endEditing()

                // Put bold tag inside letters
            }
       }
  }

So basically when the user sees the textView i have to make the text bold. So i thought of putting the text in between bold tag just the same as html. So that i can loop through the characters and see whether there is any text which is bold or italic or underline.

Am i doing it the correct way? Finding the selected range make it bold or italic or underlined and then put the tag inside the reference string, finally passing this string to the server with tags involved, so that others can see where comes the bold or italic or underlined characters.

How this will work if the same string has multiple attributes like, if the string "alvin" has bold and italic and underline, it will be like U I B "alvin' /U /I /B (tags are same as html bold, italic, underline) correct? How can i do find these in Swift, i thought about it a lot and tired of using regular expressions and looping through the string. But could not get the proper result. Thanks in advance.

So you don't need to make the whole text underlined at any time ? — Lubos, Feb 04 '16 at 13:45
@Lubos No. Only if the user selects the text and clicks on underline bar button. — Alvin Varghese, Feb 04 '16 at 13:47
Bold and Italic are inside NSFontAttributeName part, they are included in the UIFont. Underlining, is with NSUnderlineAttributeName. — Larme, Feb 04 '16 at 13:49
@AlvinVarghese - then I would consider using HTML with underline tag. I am not sure if you can set Font only for part of the UITextView — Lubos, Feb 04 '16 at 13:51
@Larme Yeah. But i am struggling to map the bold, italic and underlined characters using this. alvin. How will you find this in a string, when its having multiple instance ?? — Alvin Varghese, Feb 04 '16 at 13:52
Add the effects one by one. But you know that there is a translator to do htmlString to NSAttributedString, right? — Larme, Feb 04 '16 at 13:54
@Larme Ohh is it ?I didn't know about that, could you please tell me more about it ? — Alvin Varghese, Feb 04 '16 at 13:56
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25607247/how-do-i-decode-html-entities-in-swift — Larme, Feb 04 '16 at 13:56
If you don't want to do it via HTML, you can check the answer from Kirit from this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27997107/how-to-bold-some-words-in-my-uitextview-using-nsmutableattributedstring — Lubos, Feb 04 '16 at 14:25

String with multilpe attributes in swift

0 Answers0