Placeholder in UITextView

Question

My application uses an UITextView. Now I want the UITextView to have a placeholder similar to the one you can set for an UITextField.<

Answer 1

You could also create a new class TextViewWithPlaceholder as a subclass of UITextView.

(This code is kind of rough -- but I think it's on the right track.)

@interface TextViewWithPlaceholder : UITextView
{

    NSString *placeholderText;  // make a property
    UIColor *placeholderColor;  // make a property
    UIColor *normalTextColor;   // cache text color here whenever you switch to the placeholderColor
}

- (void) setTextColor: (UIColor*) color
{
   normalTextColor = color;
   [super setTextColor: color];
}

- (void) updateForTextChange
{
    if ([self.text length] == 0)
    { 
        normalTextColor = self.textColor;
        self.textColor = placeholderColor;
        self.text = placeholderText;
    }
    else
    {
        self.textColor = normalTextColor;
    }

}

In your delegate, add this:

- (void)textViewDidChange:(UITextView *)textView
{
    if ([textView respondsToSelector: @selector(updateForTextChange)])
    {
        [textView updateForTextChange];
    }

}