Border around every word of UILabel

Question

Is there a way i can draw border around every word of UILabel. Suppose UILabel contains the string \" This is the Line 1\".

I want 5 differ

Answer 1

I am not aware of an easy to use code for UILabel, but for UITextView:

Swift playground

setup:

import UIKit

let string = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet"

let textView = UITextView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 100, height: 100))
textView.text = string

use regular expressions get a match for every word:

let pattern = "[a-zA-Z0-9]+"
let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options: [])
let matches = regex.matchesInString(string, options: [], range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))

function to get a rect for each match (ported from this answer):

func frameOfTextInRange(range:NSRange, inTextView textView:UITextView) -> CGRect {
    let beginning = textView.beginningOfDocument
    let start = textView.positionFromPosition(beginning, offset: range.location)!
    let end = textView.positionFromPosition(start, offset: range.length)!
    let textRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(start, toPosition: end)!
    let rect = textView.firstRectForRange(textRange)
    return textView.convertRect(rect, fromView: textView)
}

iterate over each match, get its frame, use it to create a view for the background, add it to the text view:

for m in matches {
    let range = m.range
    let frame = frameOfTextInRange(range, inTextView: textView)
    let v = UIView(frame: frame)
    v.layer.borderWidth = 1
    v.layer.borderColor = UIColor.blueColor().CGColor
    textView.addSubview(v)

}

---

But possibly this doesn't give the result you were expecting. To get a better controls, you could use attributed strings.

Here the same code with using attributed strings

import UIKit

let string = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet"

let textView = UITextView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 100, height: 100))

let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: string)
let paragraphStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
paragraphStyle.lineHeightMultiple = 1.25
attributedString.addAttribute(NSParagraphStyleAttributeName, value: paragraphStyle, range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))

textView.attributedText = attributedString

let pattern = "[a-zA-Z0-9]+"
let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options: [])
let matches = regex.matchesInString(string, options: [], range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))

func frameOfTextInRange(range:NSRange, inTextView textView:UITextView) -> CGRect {
    let beginning = textView.beginningOfDocument
    let start = textView.positionFromPosition(beginning, offset: range.location)!
    let end = textView.positionFromPosition(start, offset: range.length)!
    let textRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(start, toPosition: end)!
    let rect = textView.firstRectForRange(textRange)
    return textView.convertRect(rect, fromView: textView)
}

for m in matches {
    let range = m.range
    var frame = frameOfTextInRange(range, inTextView: textView)
    frame = CGRectInset(frame, CGFloat(-1.2), CGFloat(2))
    frame = CGRectOffset(frame, CGFloat(0), CGFloat(2))
    let v = UIView(frame: frame)
    v.layer.borderWidth = 1
    v.layer.borderColor = UIColor.blueColor().CGColor
    textView.addSubview(v)

}

---

Also helpful to create beautiful styles would be to add the views to a background view and add that textview on top

import UIKit

let string = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet"

let textView = UITextView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 100, height: 100))
let textViewBG = UIView(frame: textView.bounds)
textViewBG.backgroundColor = UIColor.whiteColor()
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: string)
let paragraphStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
paragraphStyle.lineHeightMultiple = 1.25
attributedString.addAttribute(NSParagraphStyleAttributeName, value: paragraphStyle, range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))
attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: UIColor.whiteColor(), range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))
textView.attributedText = attributedString
textView.backgroundColor = UIColor.clearColor()

let pattern = "[a-zA-Z0-9]+"
let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options: [])
let matches = regex.matchesInString(string, options: [], range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))

func frameOfTextInRange(range:NSRange, inTextView textView:UITextView) -> CGRect {
    let beginning = textView.beginningOfDocument
    let start = textView.positionFromPosition(beginning, offset: range.location)!
    let end = textView.positionFromPosition(start, offset: range.length)!
    let textRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(start, toPosition: end)!
    let rect = textView.firstRectForRange(textRange)
    return textView.convertRect(rect, fromView: textView)
}

for m in matches {
    let range = m.range
    var frame = frameOfTextInRange(range, inTextView: textView)
    frame = CGRectInset(frame, CGFloat(-1.2), CGFloat(2))
    frame = CGRectOffset(frame, CGFloat(0), CGFloat(2))
    let v = UIView(frame: frame)
    v.layer.cornerRadius = 2
    v.backgroundColor = UIColor(hue: 0.66, saturation: 0.6, brightness: 1, alpha: 1)
    textViewBG.addSubview(v)

}
textViewBG.addSubview(textView)

---

to increase the space between the words we can alter the kerning of the whitespace

import UIKit

func frameOfTextInRange(range:NSRange, inTextView textView:UITextView) -> CGRect {
    let beginning = textView.beginningOfDocument
    let start = textView.positionFromPosition(beginning, offset: range.location)!
    let end = textView.positionFromPosition(start, offset: range.length)!
    let textRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(start, toPosition: end)!
    let rect = textView.firstRectForRange(textRange)
    return textView.convertRect(rect, fromView: textView)
}

let string = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet"

let textView = UITextView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 100, height: 100))
textView.backgroundColor = UIColor.clearColor()

textView.attributedText = {
    let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: string)
    let paragraphStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
    paragraphStyle.lineHeightMultiple = 1.25
    attributedString.addAttribute(NSParagraphStyleAttributeName, value: paragraphStyle, range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))
    attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: UIColor.whiteColor(), range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))

    let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: "\\s", options: [])
    let matches = regex.matchesInString(string, options: [], range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))
    for m in matches {
        attributedString.addAttribute(NSKernAttributeName, value: 6, range: m.range)
    }
    return NSAttributedString(attributedString: attributedString)
}()

let textViewBG = UIView(frame: textView.bounds)
textViewBG.backgroundColor = UIColor.whiteColor()


let pattern = "[^ ]+"
let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options: [])
let matches = regex.matchesInString(string, options: [], range: NSMakeRange(0, string.characters.count))

for m in matches {
    textViewBG.addSubview({
        let range = m.range
        var frame = frameOfTextInRange(range, inTextView: textView)
        frame = CGRectInset(frame, CGFloat(-3), CGFloat(2))
        frame = CGRectOffset(frame, CGFloat(0), CGFloat(3))
        let v = UIView(frame: frame)
        v.layer.cornerRadius = 2
        v.backgroundColor = UIColor(hue: 211.0/360.0, saturation: 0.35, brightness: 0.78    , alpha: 1)
        return v
    }())
}

textViewBG.addSubview(textView)