ios - Hyperlinks in a UITextView

Question

I am trying to create a UITextView with a hyperlink so that when the user clicks on the link, they are taken to safari to open the webpage. I have read on link detectors for a textview but those samples always show link detection working if an actual url is present in the text (ie. www.google.com). I want it to be regular text that, when clicked, opens an associated URL. (ie. Google is the text and when clicked, opens up a url www.google.com). How can I accomplish this in iOS7/8?

Answer 1

Use NSAttributedString

NSAttributedString *attributedString = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"Google" 
                                                                       attributes:@{ NSLinkAttributeName: [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.google.com"] }];
self.textView.attributedText = attributedString;

Sure, you can set just a portion of the text to be the link. Please read more about the NSAttributedString here.

If you want to have more control and do something before opening the link. You can set the delegate to the UITextView.

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    ...
    self.textView.delegate = self; // self must conform to UITextViewDelegate protocol
}

...

- (BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldInteractWithURL:(NSURL *)URL inRange:(NSRange)characterRange {
    // Do whatever you want here
    NSLog(@"%@", URL); // URL is an instance of NSURL of the tapped link
    return YES; // Return NO if you don't want iOS to open the link
}