Underlining text in UIButton

Question

Can anyone suggest how to underline the title of a UIButton ? I have a UIButton of Custom type, and I want the Title to be underlined, but the Interface Builder does not pr

Answer 1

You can use this code to add underline with spacing in button.

• When I tried to draw an underline from interface builder. It look like below image.

1 - Interface builder reference

• And after using below code I achieved the result as I wanted.

2 - using described code

public func setTextUnderline()
    {
        let dummyButton: UIButton = UIButton.init()
        dummyButton.setTitle(self.titleLabel?.text, for: .normal)
        dummyButton.titleLabel?.font = self.titleLabel?.font
        dummyButton.sizeToFit()

        let dummyHeight = dummyButton.frame.size.height + 3

        let bottomLine = CALayer()
        bottomLine.frame = CGRect.init(x: (self.frame.size.width - dummyButton.frame.size.width)/2, y: -(self.frame.size.height - dummyHeight), width: dummyButton.frame.size.width, height: 1.0)
        bottomLine.backgroundColor = self.titleLabel?.textColor.cgColor
        self.layer.addSublayer(bottomLine)
    }

Answer 2

UIUnderlinedButton.h

@interface UIUnderlinedButton : UIButton {

}


+ (UIUnderlinedButton*) underlinedButton;
@end

UIUnderlinedButton.m

@implementation UIUnderlinedButton

+ (UIUnderlinedButton*) underlinedButton {
    UIUnderlinedButton* button = [[UIUnderlinedButton alloc] init];
    return [button autorelease];
}

- (void) drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
    CGRect textRect = self.titleLabel.frame;

    // need to put the line at top of descenders (negative value)
    CGFloat descender = self.titleLabel.font.descender;

    CGContextRef contextRef = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();

    // set to same colour as text
    CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor(contextRef, self.titleLabel.textColor.CGColor);

    CGContextMoveToPoint(contextRef, textRect.origin.x, textRect.origin.y + textRect.size.height + descender);

    CGContextAddLineToPoint(contextRef, textRect.origin.x + textRect.size.width, textRect.origin.y + textRect.size.height + descender);

    CGContextClosePath(contextRef);

    CGContextDrawPath(contextRef, kCGPathStroke);
}


@end

Answer 3

The Swift 5.0 version that works as of September 2019 in Xcode 10.3:

extension UIButton {
  func underlineText() {
    guard let title = title(for: .normal) else { return }

    let titleString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: title)
    titleString.addAttribute(
      .underlineStyle,
      value: NSUnderlineStyle.single.rawValue,
      range: NSRange(location: 0, length: title.count)
    )
    setAttributedTitle(titleString, for: .normal)
  }
}

To use it, set your button title first with button.setTitle("Button Title", for: .normal) and then call button.underlineText() to make that title underlined.

Answer 4

I believe it's some bug in font editor in XCode. If you using interface builder you have to change title from Plain to Attributed, open TextEdit create underlined text and copy-paste to textbox in XCode

Answer 5

It is very simple with attributed string

Creates a dictionary with set attributes and apply to the attributed string. Then you can set the attributed string as attibutedtitle in uibutton or attributedtext in uilabel.

NSDictionary *attrDict = @{NSFontAttributeName : [UIFont
 systemFontOfSize:14.0],NSForegroundColorAttributeName : [UIColor
 whiteColor]};
 NSMutableAttributedString *title =[[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"mybutton" attributes: attrDict]; 
[title addAttribute:NSUnderlineStyleAttributeName value:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:NSUnderlineStyleSingle] range:NSMakeRange(0,[commentString length])]; [btnRegLater setAttributedTitle:title forState:UIControlStateNormal];

Answer 6

// Only override drawRect: if you perform custom drawing.
// An empty implementation adversely affects performance during animation.
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
CGRect textRect = self.titleLabel.frame;

// need to put the line at top of descenders (negative value)
CGFloat descender = self.titleLabel.font.descender;

CGContextRef contextRef = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
UIColor *colr;
// set to same colour as text
if (self.isHighlighted || self.isSelected) {
    colr=self.titleLabel.highlightedTextColor;
}
else{
    colr= self.titleLabel.textColor;
}
CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor(contextRef, colr.CGColor);

CGContextMoveToPoint(contextRef, textRect.origin.x, textRect.origin.y +        textRect.size.height + descender);

CGContextAddLineToPoint(contextRef, textRect.origin.x + textRect.size.width, textRect.origin.y + textRect.size.height + descender);

CGContextClosePath(contextRef);

CGContextDrawPath(contextRef, kCGPathStroke);
}
//Override this to change the underline color to highlighted color
-(void)setHighlighted:(BOOL)highlighted
{
[super setHighlighted:highlighted];
// [self setNeedsDisplay];
}