UITextView that expands to text using auto layout

Question

I have a view that is laid out completely using auto layout programmatically. I have a UITextView in the middle of the view with items above and below it. Everything works f

Answer 1

I've found it's not entirely uncommon in situations where you may still need isScrollEnabled set to true to allow a reasonable UI interaction. A simple case for this is when you want to allow an auto expanding text view but still limit it's maximum height to something reasonable in a UITableView.

Here's a subclass of UITextView I've come up with that allows auto expansion with auto layout but that you could still constrain to a maximum height and which will manage whether the view is scrollable depending on the height. By default the view will expand indefinitely if you have your constraints setup that way.

import UIKit

class FlexibleTextView: UITextView {
    // limit the height of expansion per intrinsicContentSize
    var maxHeight: CGFloat = 0.0
    private let placeholderTextView: UITextView = {
        let tv = UITextView()

        tv.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        tv.backgroundColor = .clear
        tv.isScrollEnabled = false
        tv.textColor = .disabledTextColor
        tv.isUserInteractionEnabled = false
        return tv
    }()
    var placeholder: String? {
        get {
            return placeholderTextView.text
        }
        set {
            placeholderTextView.text = newValue
        }
    }

    override init(frame: CGRect, textContainer: NSTextContainer?) {
        super.init(frame: frame, textContainer: textContainer)
        isScrollEnabled = false
        autoresizingMask = [.flexibleWidth, .flexibleHeight]
        NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(UITextInputDelegate.textDidChange(_:)), name: Notification.Name.UITextViewTextDidChange, object: self)
        placeholderTextView.font = font
        addSubview(placeholderTextView)

        NSLayoutConstraint.activate([
            placeholderTextView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: leadingAnchor),
            placeholderTextView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: trailingAnchor),
            placeholderTextView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: topAnchor),
            placeholderTextView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: bottomAnchor),
        ])
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }

    override var text: String! {
        didSet {
            invalidateIntrinsicContentSize()
            placeholderTextView.isHidden = !text.isEmpty
        }
    }

    override var font: UIFont? {
        didSet {
            placeholderTextView.font = font
            invalidateIntrinsicContentSize()
        }
    }

    override var contentInset: UIEdgeInsets {
        didSet {
            placeholderTextView.contentInset = contentInset
        }
    }

    override var intrinsicContentSize: CGSize {
        var size = super.intrinsicContentSize

        if size.height == UIViewNoIntrinsicMetric {
            // force layout
            layoutManager.glyphRange(for: textContainer)
            size.height = layoutManager.usedRect(for: textContainer).height + textContainerInset.top + textContainerInset.bottom
        }

        if maxHeight > 0.0 && size.height > maxHeight {
            size.height = maxHeight

            if !isScrollEnabled {
                isScrollEnabled = true
            }
        } else if isScrollEnabled {
            isScrollEnabled = false
        }

        return size
    }

    @objc private func textDidChange(_ note: Notification) {
        // needed incase isScrollEnabled is set to true which stops automatically calling invalidateIntrinsicContentSize()
        invalidateIntrinsicContentSize()
        placeholderTextView.isHidden = !text.isEmpty
    }
}

As a bonus there's support for including placeholder text similar to UILabel.