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 we

Answer 1

Swift 3, iOS10 , Xcode 9

@sikhapol's answer is really nice if you knew exactly the words you want to parse like "word dictionary" some how

it's all about the string it self that displayed in UITextView

My solution is based the text rendering if you make the UITextView render an html tags you may use href tag

Here is some Code references you may use

first you need to configure UITextView from interface builder or form code to

1. Selectable
2. Data detectores

Note : do not make the textview editable

Interface builder

programmatically

         let htmlData = NSString(string: "go to google and search for it").data(using: String.Encoding.unicode.rawValue)


        let attributedString = try! NSAttributedString(data: htmlData!, options: [NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute: NSHTMLTextDocumentType], documentAttributes: nil)
        yourUIViewView.isSelectable = true
        yourUIViewView.dataDetectorTypes = .link
        yourUIViewView.attributedText = attributedString
        yourUIViewView.delegate = self

for the UITextViewDelegate

    func textView(_ textView: UITextView, shouldInteractWith URL: URL, in characterRange: NSRange, interaction: UITextItemInteraction) -> Bool {
    
       // check for the url string for performing your own custom actions here
      let urlString = URL.absoluteString
    
       // Return NO if you don't want iOS to open the link
        return true
     }