How can we get the whole text from selected text in UITextView?

Question

How can I get the whole text in the blue rectangle, inside UITextView, if user select a portion like this:

My current code is to get only the selected text:

if let range = textView.selectedTextRange {
    let selectedText = textView.text(in: range) {
        //selectedText
    }
}

No I want the text in the blue rectangle , not the text in all textView — Hassan Taleb, Mar 12 '21 at 14:29
You’ll find the methods you need in NSLayoutManager https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/nslayoutmanager which you can access from the textView instance. — Warren Burton, Mar 12 '21 at 15:01
*inside the blue rectangle* isn't well defined. It looks like you want all the contiguous lines where any portion of the line is selected, but I'm just guessing there. Can you explain more specifically what your requirements are? Also, if you're going to include code, include enough *actual* code that it's useful; the minimal code that you've provided doesn't tell us anything useful. — Caleb, Mar 12 '21 at 15:13

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 12 '21 at 17:37

3

You have to set your view controller as the text view delegate UITextViewDelegate

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    textView.delegate = self
}

Implement textViewDidChangeSelection method

func textViewDidChangeSelection(_ textView: UITextView)

In this function you can get the UITextPosition of the start and end of the lines of the selection, then create a new range and retrieve the selected text:

func textViewDidChangeSelection(_ textView: UITextView) {
    guard let selectedTextRange = textView.selectedTextRange,
          let start = textView.tokenizer
            .position(from: selectedTextRange.start, toBoundary: .line, inDirection: .backward),
           let end = textView.tokenizer
            .position(from: selectedTextRange.end, toBoundary: .line, inDirection: .forward),
           let range = textView.textRange(from: start, to: end),
           let text = textView.text(in: range)
    else { return }
    print(text)
}

Add this extension helpers to your project:

extension UITextDirection {
    static let forward: Self = .init(rawValue: 0)
    static let backward: Self = .init(rawValue: 1)
}

edited Mar 12 '21 at 17:37

Leo Dabus

229,809
59
489
571

answered Mar 12 '21 at 14:40

Etienne Jézéquel

610
5
13

I don't want the selected text, please read the question and see the image , I want the text inside blue rectangle, not only the selected text – Hassan Taleb Mar 12 '21 at 14:42
Sorry for miss reading, I edit my answer :) – Etienne Jézéquel Mar 12 '21 at 15:07
Thank you!, Is it simple to get its range as NSRange not as UITextRange ? – Hassan Taleb Mar 12 '21 at 15:21
I think it will be difficult, you should find the indexes of the start and the end of the lines and then create a `NSRange`, perhaps look at this post : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21149767/convert-selectedtextrange-uitextrange-to-nsrange – Etienne Jézéquel Mar 12 '21 at 15:24

How can we get the whole text from selected text in UITextView?

1 Answers1