How can I make a clickable link in an NSAttributedString

Question

It s trivial to make hyperlinks clickable in a UITextView  You just set the  detect links  checkbox on the view in IB  and it detects HTTP links and turns them into hyperlinks    However  that still means that what the user sees is the  raw  link  RTF files and HTML both allow you to set up a user-readable string with a link  behind  it    It s easy to install attributed text into a text view  or a UILabel or UITextField  for that matter   However  when that attributed text includes a link  it is not clickable   Is there a way to make user-readable text clickable in a UITextView  UILabel or UITextField   The markup is different on SO  but here is the general idea  What I want is text like this      This morph was generated with Face Dancer  Click to view in the app store    The only thing I can get is this      This morph was generated with Face Dancer  Click on http   example com facedancer to view in the app store

User · Answer

The excellent library from  AliSoftware OHAttributedStringAdditions makes it easy to add links in UILabel here is the documentation  https   github com AliSoftware OHAttributedStringAdditions wiki link-in-UILabel

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Swift Version           Attributed String for Label     let plainText    Apkia      let styledText   NSMutableAttributedString string  plainText         Set Attribuets for Color  HyperLink and Font Size     let attributes    NSFontAttributeName  UIFont systemFontOfSize 14 0   NSLinkAttributeName NSURL string   http   apkia com      NSForegroundColorAttributeName  UIColor blueColor        styledText setAttributes attributes  range  NSMakeRange 0  plainText characters count       registerLabel attributedText   styledText

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I needed to keep using a pure UILabel  so called this from my tap recognizer  this is based on malex s response here  Character index at touch point for UILabel    UILabel  label    UILabel  gesture view  CGPoint tapLocation    gesture locationInView label       create attributed string with paragraph style from label  NSMutableAttributedString  attr    label attributedText mutableCopy   NSMutableParagraphStyle  paragraphStyle    NSMutableParagraphStyle new   paragraphStyle alignment   label textAlignment    attr addAttribute NSParagraphStyleAttributeName value paragraphStyle range NSMakeRange 0  label attributedText length        init text storage  NSTextStorage  textStorage     NSTextStorage alloc  initWithAttributedString attr   NSLayoutManager  layoutManager     NSLayoutManager alloc  init    textStorage addLayoutManager layoutManager       init text container  NSTextContainer  textContainer     NSTextContainer alloc  initWithSize CGSizeMake label frame size width  label frame size height 100     textContainer lineFragmentPadding    0  textContainer maximumNumberOfLines   label numberOfLines  textContainer lineBreakMode          label lineBreakMode    layoutManager addTextContainer textContainer       find tapped character  NSUInteger characterIndex    layoutManager characterIndexForPoint tapLocation                                                   inTextContainer textContainer                          fractionOfDistanceBetweenInsertionPoints NULL       process link at tapped character   attr enumerateAttributesInRange NSMakeRange characterIndex  1                                           options 0                                       usingBlock   NSDictionary lt NSString   id gt     Nonnull attrs  NSRange range  BOOL    Nonnull stop                                              if  attrs NSLinkAttributeName                                                   NSString  urlString   attrs NSLinkAttributeName                                                 NSURL  url    NSURL URLWithString urlString                                                   UIApplication sharedApplication  openURL url

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I have written a method  that adds a link linkString  to a string  fullString  with a certain url urlString     -  NSAttributedString   linkedStringFromFullString  NSString   fullString withLinkString  NSString   linkString andUrlString  NSString   urlString       NSRange range    fullString rangeOfString linkString options NSLiteralSearch       NSMutableAttributedString  str     NSMutableAttributedString alloc  initWithString fullString        NSMutableParagraphStyle  paragraphStyle   NSMutableParagraphStyle new      paragraphStyle alignment   NSTextAlignmentCenter      NSDictionary  attributes     NSForegroundColorAttributeName RGB 0x999999                                    NSFontAttributeName  UIFont fontWithName   HelveticaNeue-Light  size 10                                    NSParagraphStyleAttributeName paragraphStyle        str addAttributes attributes range NSMakeRange 0   str length          str addAttribute  NSLinkAttributeName value urlString range range        return str      You should call it like this    NSString  fullString     A man who bought the Google com domain name for  12 and owned it for about a minute has been rewarded by Google for uncovering the flaw    NSString  linkString     Google com   NSString  urlString     http   www google com     youTextView attributedText    self linkedStringFromFullString fullString withLinkString linkString andUrlString urlString

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Swift 3 example to detect actions on attributed text taps   https   stackoverflow com a 44226491 5516830  let termsAndConditionsURL   TERMS CONDITIONS URL  let privacyURL              PRIVACY URL   override func viewDidLoad         super viewDidLoad        self txtView delegate   self     let str    By continuing  you accept the Terms of use and Privacy policy      let attributedString   NSMutableAttributedString string  str      var foundRange   attributedString mutableString range of   Terms of use     mention the parts of the attributed text you want to tap and get an custom action     attributedString addAttribute NSLinkAttributeName  value  termsAndConditionsURL  range  foundRange      foundRange   attributedString mutableString range of   Privacy policy       attributedString addAttribute NSLinkAttributeName  value  privacyURL  range  foundRange      txtView attributedText   attributedString    func textView   textView  UITextView  shouldInteractWith URL  URL  in characterRange  NSRange  - gt  Bool       let storyboard   UIStoryboard name   Main   bundle  nil      let vc   storyboard instantiateViewController withIdentifier   WebView   as  SKWebViewController      if  URL absoluteString    termsAndConditionsURL            vc strWebURL   TERMS CONDITIONS URL         self navigationController  pushViewController vc  animated  true        else if  URL absoluteString    privacyURL            vc strWebURL   PRIVACY URL         self navigationController  pushViewController vc  animated  true            return false     Like wise you can add any action you want with shouldInteractWith URLUITextFieldDelegate method   Cheers

User · Answer

Use NSMutableAttributedString    NSMutableAttributedString   str     NSMutableAttributedString alloc  initWithString   Google     str addAttribute  NSLinkAttributeName value    http   www google com  range  NSMakeRange 0  str length    yourTextView attributedText   str    Edit   This is not directly about the question but just to clarify  UITextField and UILabel does not support opening URLs  If you want to use UILabel with links you can check TTTAttributedLabel    Also you should set dataDetectorTypes value of your UITextView to UIDataDetectorTypeLink or UIDataDetectorTypeAll to open URLs when clicked  Or you can use delegate method as suggested in the comments

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I too had a similar requirement  initially I used UILabel and then I realized that UITextView is better  I made UITextView behave like UILabel by disabling interaction and scrolling and made a category method for NSMutableAttributedString to set link to text same as what Karl had done   1 for that  this is my obj c version  - void setTextAsLink  NSString   textToFind withLinkURL  NSString   url       NSRange range    self mutableString rangeOfString textToFind options NSCaseInsensitiveSearch        if  range location    NSNotFound              self addAttribute NSLinkAttributeName value url range range            self addAttribute NSForegroundColorAttributeName value  UIColor URLColor  range range             you can use the below delegate then to handle the action  -  BOOL textView  UITextView   textView shouldInteractWithURL  NSURL   url inRange  NSRange characterRange          do the task     return YES

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A quick addition to Duncan C s original description vis-  -vie IB behavior  He writes   It s trivial to make hyperlinks clickable in a UITextView  You just set the  detect links  checkbox on the view in IB  and it detects http links and turns them into hyperlinks    My experience  at least in xcode 7  is that you also have to unclick the  Editable  behavior for the urls to be detected  amp  clickable

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In case you re having issues with what  Karl Nosworthy and  esilver had provided above  I ve updated the NSMutableAttributedString extension to its Swift 4 version   extension NSMutableAttributedString    public func setAsLink textToFind String  linkURL String  - gt  Bool        let foundRange   self mutableString range of  textToFind      if foundRange location    NSNotFound                NSMutableAttributedString string  textToFind             Set Attribuets for Color  HyperLink and Font Size         let attributes    NSFontAttributeName  UIFont bodyFont  regular  shouldResize  true   NSLinkAttributeName NSURL string  linkURL    NSForegroundColorAttributeName  UIColor blue           self setAttributes attributes  range  foundRange          return true           return false

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Use UITextView and set dataDetectorTypes for Link   like this   testTextView editable   false  testTextView dataDetectorTypes    link   If you want to detect link  phone number address etc  then  testTextView dataDetectorTypes    all

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If you want to use the NSLinkAttributeName in a UITextView  then you may consider using the AttributedTextView library  It s a UITextView subclass that makes it very easy to handle these  For more info see  https   github com evermeer AttributedTextView  You can make any part of the text interact like this  where textView1 is a UITextView IBoutlet    textView1 attributer        1    red      append  This is the first test     green      append  Click on    black      append  evict nl   makeInteract     in         UIApplication shared open URL string   http   evict nl     options       completionHandler    completed in          underline      append   for testing links     black      append  Next test   underline makeInteract     in         print  NEXT              all font UIFont name   SourceSansPro-Regular   size  16        setLinkColor UIColor purple     And for handling hashtags and mentions you can use code like this   textView1 attributer     test  What  hashtags do we have in  evermeer  AtributedTextView library       matchHashtags underline      matchMentions      makeInteract   link in         UIApplication shared open URL string   https   twitter com  link replacingOccurrences of       with           options       completionHandler    completed in

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NSMutableAttributedString  attributedString     NSMutableAttributedString alloc  initWithString strSomeTextWithLinks    NSDictionary  linkAttributes     NSForegroundColorAttributeName   UIColor redColor                                       NSUnderlineColorAttributeName   UIColor blueColor                                    NSUnderlineStyleAttributeName    NSUnderlinePatternSolid     customTextView linkTextAttributes   linkAttributes     customizes the appearance of links textView attributedText   attributedString    KEY POINTS    Make sure that you enable  Selectable  behavior of the UITextView in XIB  Make sure that you disable  Editable  behavior of the UITextView in XIB

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Just find a code-free solution for UITextView    Enable Detection- Links options  the URL and also email will be detected and clickable

User · Answer

if you want active substring in your UITextView then you can use my extended TextView    its short and simple  You can edit it as you want   result    code  https   github com marekmand ActiveSubstringTextView

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Use UITextView it supports clickable Links  Create attributed string using the following code  NSMutableAttributedString  attributedString     NSMutableAttributedString alloc  initWithString strSomeTextWithLinks     Then set UITextView text as follows  NSDictionary  linkAttributes     NSForegroundColorAttributeName   UIColor redColor                                     NSUnderlineColorAttributeName   UIColor blueColor                                     NSUnderlineStyleAttributeName    NSUnderlinePatternSolid     customTextView linkTextAttributes   linkAttributes     customizes the appearance of links textView attributedText   attributedString    Make sure that you enable  Selectable  behavior of the UITextView in XIB

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I just created a subclass of UILabel to specially address such use cases  You can add multiple links easily and define different handlers for them  It also supports highlighting the pressed link when you touch down for touch feedback  Please refer to https   github com null09264 FRHyperLabel   In your case  the code may like this    FRHyperLabel  label    FRHyperLabel new    NSString  string     This morph was generated with Face Dancer  Click to view in the app store    NSDictionary  attributes     NSFontAttributeName   UIFont preferredFontForTextStyle UIFontTextStyleHeadline     label attributedText     NSAttributedString alloc initWithString string attributes attributes     label setLinkForSubstring   Face Dancer  withLinkHandler   FRHyperLabel  label  NSString  substring         UIApplication sharedApplication  openURL aURL         Sample Screenshot  the handler is set to pop an alert instead of open a url in this case

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The quick answer is using UITextView instead of UILabel  You need to enable Selectable and disable Editable   Then disable scroll indicators and bounces       My solution using NSMutableAttributedString from html string NSHTMLTextDocumentType  NSString  s      lt p gt  lt a href  https   itunes apple com us app xxxx xxxx mt 8  gt https   itunes apple com us app xxxx xxxx mt 8 lt  a gt  lt  p gt     NSMutableAttributedString  text     NSMutableAttributedString alloc                                             initWithData   s dataUsingEncoding NSUnicodeStringEncoding                                             options     NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute  NSHTMLTextDocumentType                                              documentAttributes  nil                                            error  nil                                                cell content attributedText   text

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Update  There were 2 key parts to my question   How to make a link where the text shown for the clickable link is different than the actual link that is invoked  How to set up the links without having to use custom code to set the attributes on the text   It turns out that iOS 7 added the ability to load attributed text from NSData  I created a custom subclass of UITextView that takes advantage of the  IBInspectable attribute and lets you load contents from an RTF file directly in IB  You simply type the filename into IB and the custom class does the rest  Here are the details  In iOS 7  NSAttributedString gained the method initWithData options documentAttributes error   That method lets you load an NSAttributedString from an NSData object  You can first load an RTF file into NSData  then use initWithData options documentAttributes error  to load that NSData into your text view   Note that there is also a method initWithFileURL options documentAttributes error  that will load an attributed string directly from a file  but that method was deprecated in iOS 9  It s safer to use the method initWithData options documentAttributes error   which wasn t deprecated  I wanted a method that let me install clickable links into my text views without having to create any code specific to the links I was using  The solution I came up with was to create a custom subclass of UITextView I call RTF UITextView and give it an  IBInspectable property called RTF Filename  Adding the  IBInspectable attribute to a property causes Interface Builder to expose that property in the  quot Attributes Inspector  quot  You can then set that value from IB wihtout custom code  I also added an  IBDesignable attribute to my custom class  The  IBDesignable attribute tells Xcode that it should install a running copy of your custom view class into Interface builder so you can see it in the graphical display of your view hierarchy    Unfortunately  for this class  the  IBDesignable property seems to be flaky  It worked when I first added it  but then I deleted the plain text contents of my text view and the clickable links in my view went away and I have not been able to get them back   The code for my RTF UITextView is very simple  In addition to adding the  IBDesignable attribute and an RTF Filename property with the  IBInspectable attribute  I added a didSet   method to the RTF Filename property  The didSet   method gets called any time the value of the RTF Filename property changes  The code for the didSet   method is quite simple   IBDesignable class RTF UITextView  UITextView      IBInspectable   var RTF Filename  String            didSet newValue                If the RTF Filename is nil or the empty string  don t do anything       if   RTF Filename     quot  quot   isEmpty                  return                 Use optional binding to try to get an URL to the         specified filename in the app bundle  If that succeeds  try to load         NSData from the file        if let fileURL   NSBundle mainBundle   URLForResource RTF Filename  withExtension   quot rtf quot                       If the fileURL loads  also try to load NSData from the URL          let theData   NSData contentsOfURL  fileURL                  var aString NSAttributedString         do                       Try to load an NSAttributedString from the data           try             aString   NSAttributedString data  theData                options                     documentAttributes   nil                         If it succeeds  install the attributed string into the field            self attributedText   aString                    catch                     print  quot Nerp  quot                                          Note that if the  IBDesignable property isn t going to reliably allow you to preview your styled text in Interface builder then it might be better to set the above code up as an extension of UITextView rather than a custom subclass  That way you could use it in any text view without having to change the text view to the custom class  See my other answer if you need to support iOS versions prior to iOS 7  You can download a sample project that includes this new class from gitHub  DatesInSwift demo project on Github

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I found this really useful but I needed to do it in quite a few places so I ve wrapped my approach up in a simple extension to NSMutableAttributedString   Swift 3  extension NSMutableAttributedString        public func setAsLink textToFind String  linkURL String  - gt  Bool            let foundRange   self mutableString range of  textToFind          if foundRange location    NSNotFound               self addAttribute  link  value  linkURL  range  foundRange              return true                   return false           Swift 2  import Foundation  extension NSMutableAttributedString       public func setAsLink textToFind String  linkURL String  - gt  Bool           let foundRange   self mutableString rangeOfString textToFind         if foundRange location    NSNotFound              self addAttribute NSLinkAttributeName  value  linkURL  range  foundRange             return true                 return false          Example usage   let attributedString   NSMutableAttributedString string  I love stackoverflow    let linkWasSet   attributedString setAsLink  stackoverflow   linkURL   http   stackoverflow com    if linkWasSet          adjust more attributedString properties     Objective-C  I ve just hit a requirement to do the same in a pure Objective-C project  so here s the Objective-C category    interface NSMutableAttributedString  SetAsLinkSupport   -  BOOL setAsLink  NSString  textToFind linkURL  NSString  linkURL    end    implementation NSMutableAttributedString  SetAsLinkSupport   -  BOOL setAsLink  NSString  textToFind linkURL  NSString  linkURL         NSRange foundRange    self mutableString rangeOfString textToFind        if  foundRange location    NSNotFound              self addAttribute NSLinkAttributeName value linkURL range foundRange            return YES              return NO      end   Example usage   NSMutableAttributedString  attributedString     NSMutableAttributedString alloc  initWithString  I love stackoverflow      BOOL linkWasSet    attributedString setAsLink   stackoverflow  linkURL   http   stackoverflow com     if  linkWasSet           adjust more attributedString properties     Make Sure that the NSTextField s Behavior attribute is set as Selectable

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Swift 4   var string    Google  var attributedString   NSMutableAttributedString string  string  attributes  NSAttributedStringKey link  URL string   http   www google com       yourTextView attributedText   attributedString   Swift 3 1   var string    Google  var attributedString   NSMutableAttributedString string  string  attributes  NSLinkAttributeName  URL string   http   www google com       yourTextView attributedText   attributedString

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The heart of my question was that I wanted to be able to create clickable links in text views fields labels without having to write custom code to manipulate the text and add the links  I wanted it to be data-driven   I finally figured out how to do it  The issue is that IB doesn t honor embedded links    Furthermore  the iOS version of NSAttributedString doesn t let you initialize an attributed string from an RTF file  The OS X version of NSAttributedString does have an initializer that takes an RTF file as input   NSAttributedString conforms to the NSCoding protocol  so you can convert it to from NSData  I created an OS X command line tool that takes an RTF file as input and outputs a file with the extension  data that contains the NSData from NSCoding  I then put the  data file into my project and add a couple of lines of code that loads the text into the view  The code looks like this  this project was in Swift        If we can load a file called  Dates data  from the bundle and convert it to an attributed string  install it in the dates field  The contents contain clickable links with custom URLS to select each date     if   let datesPath   NSBundle mainBundle   pathForResource  Dates   ofType   data      let datesString   NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithFile datesPath  as  NSAttributedString     datesField attributedText   datesString     For apps that use a lot of formatted text  I create a build rule that tells Xcode that all the  rtf files in a given folder are source and the  data files are the output  Once I do that  I simply add  rtf files to the designated directory   or edit existing files  and the build process figures out that they are new updated  runs the command line tool  and copies the files into the app bundle  It works beautifully   I wrote a blog post that links to a sample  Swift  project demonstrating the technique  You can see it here   Creating clickable URLs in a UITextField that open in your app

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Minor improvement to ujell s solution  If you use NSURL instead of a NSString  you can use any URL  e g  custom urls   NSURL  URL    NSURL URLWithString    whatsapp   app    NSMutableAttributedString   str     NSMutableAttributedString alloc  initWithString   start Whatsapp     str addAttribute  NSLinkAttributeName value URL range  NSMakeRange 0  str length    yourTextField attributedText   str    Have fun

[ios] How can I make a clickable link in an NSAttributedString?

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