UITextView with hyperlink text

Question

With a non-editable UITextView, I would like to embed text like this in iOS9+:

Just click here to register

I can create a functi

Answer 1

The same solution for Swift 4 using extensions:

extension UITextView {


    func hyperLink(originalText: String, hyperLink: String, urlString: String) {

            let style = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
            style.alignment = .left

            let attributedOriginalText = NSMutableAttributedString(string: originalText)
            let linkRange = attributedOriginalText.mutableString.range(of: hyperLink)
            let fullRange = NSMakeRange(0, attributedOriginalText.length)
            attributedOriginalText.addAttribute(NSAttributedStringKey.link, value: urlString, range: linkRange)
            attributedOriginalText.addAttribute(NSAttributedStringKey.paragraphStyle, value: style, range: fullRange)
            attributedOriginalText.addAttribute(NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor, value: UIColor.blue, range: fullRange)
            attributedOriginalText.addAttribute(NSAttributedStringKey.font, value: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 10), range: fullRange)

            self.linkTextAttributes = [
               kCTForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.blue,
               kCTUnderlineStyleAttributeName: NSUnderlineStyle.styleSingle.rawValue,
            ] as [String : Any]


            self.attributedText = attributedOriginalText
        }

}

Answer 2

Swift 4 code. May be I'm the only one who needs to set several links and color the words in one message. I created an AttribTextHolder class to accumulate all information about text inside this holder and easily pass it between objects to set text to UITextView somewhere deep inside a controller.

class AttribTextHolder {

        enum AttrType {
            case link
            case color
        }

        let originalText: String
        var attributes: [(text: String, type: AttrType, value: Any)]


        init(text: String, attrs: [(text: String, type: AttrType, value: Any)] = [])
        {
            originalText = text
            attributes = attrs
        }

        func addAttr(_ attr: (text: String, type: AttrType, value: Any)) -> AttribTextHolder {
            attributes.append(attr)
            return self
        }

        func setTo(textView: UITextView)
        {
            let style = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
            style.alignment = .left

            let attributedOriginalText = NSMutableAttributedString(string: originalText)

            for item in attributes {
                let arange = attributedOriginalText.mutableString.range(of: item.text)
                switch item.type {
                case .link:
                    attributedOriginalText.addAttribute(NSAttributedString.Key.link, value: item.value, range: arange)
                case .color:
                    var color = UIColor.black
                    if let c = item.value as? UIColor { color = c }
                    else if let s = item.value as? String { color = s.color() }
                    attributedOriginalText.addAttribute(NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor, value: color, range: arange)
                default:
                    break
                }
            }

            let fullRange = NSMakeRange(0, attributedOriginalText.length)
            attributedOriginalText.addAttribute(NSAttributedString.Key.paragraphStyle, value: style, range: fullRange)

            textView.linkTextAttributes = [
                kCTForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.blue,
                kCTUnderlineStyleAttributeName: NSUnderlineStyle.styleSingle.rawValue,
            ] as [String : Any]

            textView.attributedText = attributedOriginalText
        }
 }

Use it like this:

 let txt = AttribTextHolder(text: "To find out more visit our website or email us your questions")
            .addAttr((text: "our website", type: .link, "http://example.com"))
            .addAttr((text: "our website", type: .color, "#33BB22"))
            .addAttr((text: "email us", type: .link, "mailto:us@example.com"))
            .addAttr((text: "email us", type: .color, UIColor.red))
 ....
 ....
 txt.setTo(textView: myUITextView)

Also in this code I use simple String extension to convert String hex values into UIColor objects

extension String {
/// Converts string color (ex: #23FF33) into UIColor
func color() -> UIColor {
    let hex = self.trimmingCharacters(in: CharacterSet.alphanumerics.inverted)
    var int = UInt32()
    Scanner(string: hex).scanHexInt32(&int)
    let a, r, g, b: UInt32
    switch hex.characters.count {
    case 3: // RGB (12-bit)
        (a, r, g, b) = (255, (int >> 8) * 17, (int >> 4 & 0xF) * 17, (int & 0xF) * 17)
    case 6: // RGB (24-bit)
        (a, r, g, b) = (255, int >> 16, int >> 8 & 0xFF, int & 0xFF)
    case 8: // ARGB (32-bit)
        (a, r, g, b) = (int >> 24, int >> 16 & 0xFF, int >> 8 & 0xFF, int & 0xFF)
    default:
        (a, r, g, b) = (255, 0, 0, 0)
    }
    return UIColor(red: CGFloat(r) / 255, green: CGFloat(g) / 255, blue: CGFloat(b) / 255, alpha: CGFloat(a) / 255)
  }
}

Answer 3

A safer solution to implement hyperlink via UITextView

var termsConditionsTextView: UITextView = {
let view = UITextView()
 view.backgroundColor = .clear
 view.textAlignment = .left
 
 let firstTitleString = "By registering for THIS_APP I agree with the "
 let secondTitleString = "Terms & Conditions"
 let finishTitleString = firstTitleString + secondTitleString
 let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: finishTitleString)
 attributedString.addAttribute(.link, value: "https://stackoverflow.com", range: NSRange(location: firstTitleString.count, length: secondTitleString.count))
 
 view.attributedText = attributedString
 view.textContainerInset = .zero
 view.linkTextAttributes = [
     .foregroundColor: UIColor.blue,
     .underlineStyle: NSUnderlineStyle.single.isEmpty
 ]
 
 view.font = view.font = UIFont(name: "YOUR_FONT_NAME", size: 16)
 view.textColor = UIColor.black
 
 return view }()

Answer 4

You could use this simple method to add a hyperlink to any set of characters starting with tag

func addLink(forString string : NSMutableAttributedString
        ,baseURL : String
        ,tag : String){
        let array = string.string.replacingOccurrences(of: "\n", with: " ").components(separatedBy: " ")
        let filterArray = array.filter { (string) -> Bool in
            return string.contains(tag)
        }
        for element in filterArray {
            let removedHashtag = element.replacingOccurrences(of: tag, with: "")
            let url = baseURL + removedHashtag
            let range = NSString.init(string: (string.string)).range(of: element)
            string.addAttributes([NSAttributedStringKey.link : url.replacingOccurrences(of: " ", with: "")], range: range)
        }
    }

Answer 5

I wanted to do the same thing and ended up just using a UIButton with the title "click here" surrounded by UILabels "just " and " to register", and then:

@IBAction func btnJustClickHereLink(_ sender: UIButton) {
    if let url = URL(string: "http://example.com") {
        UIApplication.shared.openURL(url)
    }
}

Answer 6

Set isEditable = false or the text view will go into text-editing mode when user taps on it.

Swift 4 and later

let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "Just click here to register")
let url = URL(string: "https://www.apple.com")!

// Set the 'click here' substring to be the link
attributedString.setAttributes([.link: url], range: NSMakeRange(5, 10))

self.textView.attributedText = attributedString
self.textView.isUserInteractionEnabled = true
self.textView.isEditable = false

// Set how links should appear: blue and underlined
self.textView.linkTextAttributes = [
    .foregroundColor: UIColor.blue,
    .underlineStyle: NSUnderlineStyle.single.rawValue
]