Select Bold and Italicized text from textField

Question

How can I select only bold and italicized text entered by user in a textField/textView ?

We can make a selected text bold,

Answer 1

on iOS use attributedText properties with labels/textfields

on OSX use attributedStringValue

you can then enumerate through the attributedText's attributes and check each attribute. Ill whip up some code (osx & iOS)

NSMutableAttributedString *str = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"none "];

id temp = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"bold " attributes:@{NSFontAttributeName: [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:12]}];
[str appendAttributedString:temp];

temp = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"italic " attributes:@{NSFontAttributeName: [UIFont italicSystemFontOfSize:12]}];
[str appendAttributedString:temp];

temp = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"none " attributes:@{NSFontAttributeName: [UIFont systemFontOfSize:12]}];
[str appendAttributedString:temp];

temp = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"bold2 " attributes:@{NSFontAttributeName: [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:12]}];
[str appendAttributedString:temp];

self.label.attributedText = str;

NSMutableString *italics = [NSMutableString string];
NSMutableString *bolds = [NSMutableString string];
NSMutableString *normals = [NSMutableString string];

for (int i=0; i<str.length; i++) {
    //could be tuned: MOSTLY by taking into account the effective range and not checking 1 per 1
    //warn: == might work now but maybe i'd be cooler to check font traits using CoreText
    UIFont *font = [str attribute:NSFontAttributeName atIndex:i effectiveRange:nil];
    if(font == [UIFont italicSystemFontOfSize:12]) {
        [italics appendString:[[str mutableString] substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(i, 1)]];
    } else if(font == [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:12]){
        [bolds appendString:[[str mutableString] substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(i, 1)]];
    } else {
        [normals appendString:[[str mutableString] substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(i, 1)]];
    }
}

NSLog(@"%@", italics);
NSLog(@"%@", bolds);
NSLog(@"%@", normals);

Now here is how to find it. Deducing a selection range from this should be easy peasy :)

Note: you can only have a continuous selection! neither on osx nor on ios can you select n parts of a textfield/textview