Animate a change in part of an NSMutableAttributedString

Question

I\'m making an iOS app that has a UITextView. When closing a parenthesis in that UITextView, I want to highlight to the user which opening parenthesis it pairs to. So far I\

Answer 1

Another solution which works for me (Swift 4) is to generate multiple attributed strings, assign one to label and then replace the content (attributedText) inside transition animation block. For example:

// MARK: Extension util which generates NSAttributedString by text,font,color,backgroundColor
extension NSAttributedString {
    class func generate(from text: String, font: UIFont = UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 16), color: UIColor = .black, backgroundColor: UIColor = .clear) -> NSAttributedString {
        let atts: [NSAttributedStringKey : Any] = [.foregroundColor : color, .font : font, .backgroundColor : backgroundColor]
        return NSAttributedString(string: text, attributes: atts)
    }
}

// MARK: Sentence
let string1 = "Hi, i'm "
let string2 = "Daniel"

// MARK: Generate highlighted string
let prefixAttString = NSAttributedString.generate(from: string1)
let highlightedSuffixAttString = NSAttributedString.generate(from: string2, backgroundColor: .red)
let highlightedString = NSMutableAttributedString()
highlightedString.append(prefixAttString)
highlightedString.append(highlightedSuffixAttString)


// MARK: Generate regular string (Same prefix, different suffix)enter image description here
let regularSuffixAttString = NSAttributedString.generate(from: string2)
let regularString = NSMutableAttributedString()
regularString.append(prefixAttString)
regularString.append(regularSuffixAttString)

self.view.addSubview(label)
label.attributedText = regularString

// UIViewAnimationOptions.transitionCrossDissolve is necessary.
UIView.transition(with: self.label, duration: 4, options: [.transitionCrossDissolve], animations: {
    self.label.attributedText = highlightedString
}, completion: nil)

}

Don't forget to use .transitionCrossDissolve in the animation options.