How do you make a UITextView detect link part in the text and still have userInteractionDisabled?

Question

I have a textView that is layered on a tableView cell. I need the user to click on the tableView row to open a viewController but if the textView has a link it must be click

Answer 1

If you are trying to add a UITextView with links to a cell, and want didSelectRow to be called when the user taps on anything but the link, then you should use hitTest:withEvent:

Swift 3

override func hitTest(_ point: CGPoint, with event: UIEvent?) -> UIView? {
    // location of the tap
    var location = point
    location.x -= self.textContainerInset.left
    location.y -= self.textContainerInset.top

    // find the character that's been tapped
    let characterIndex = self.layoutManager.characterIndex(for: location, in: self.textContainer, fractionOfDistanceBetweenInsertionPoints: nil)
    if characterIndex < self.textStorage.length {
        // if the character is a link, handle the tap as UITextView normally would
        if (self.textStorage.attribute(NSLinkAttributeName, at: characterIndex, effectiveRange: nil) != nil) {
            return self
        }
    }

    // otherwise return nil so the tap goes on to the next receiver
    return nil
}

I wrote an article about this with a bit more details.