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

I achieved what I wanted to by getting the frames for the actual parentheses and creating new UILabels on top of my UITextView and animating those labels.

    @IBAction func didPressClosingParentheses(sender: AnyObject) {

    inputTextView.text = inputTextView.text + ")"
    var count = 1
    let currentString = inputTextView.attributedText.string
    let characterArray = Array(currentString)
    let closingIndex = characterArray.count - 1
    for i in reverse(0...closingIndex-1) {
        if characterArray[i] == "(" {
            count--
        }
        else if characterArray[i] == ")" {
            count++
        }
        if count == 0 {
            let startingIndex = i

            let openingRange = NSMakeRange(startingIndex, 1)
            let closingRange = NSMakeRange(closingIndex, 1)

            var openingFrame = inputTextView.layoutManager.boundingRectForGlyphRange(openingRange, inTextContainer: inputTextView.textContainer)

            openingFrame.origin.y += inputTextView.textContainerInset.top
            var openingLabel = UILabel(frame: openingFrame)
            openingLabel.text = "("
            openingLabel.font = UIFont(name: "HelveticaNeue-Thin", size: 28)
            openingLabel.textColor = whiteishColor
            openingLabel.backgroundColor = bluishColor

            var closingFrame = inputTextView.layoutManager.boundingRectForGlyphRange(closingRange, inTextContainer: inputTextView.textContainer)
            closingFrame.origin.y += inputTextView.textContainerInset.top
            var closingLabel = UILabel(frame: closingFrame)
            closingLabel.text = ")"
            closingLabel.font = UIFont(name: "HelveticaNeue-Thin", size: 28)
            closingLabel.textColor = whiteishColor
            closingLabel.backgroundColor = bluishColor

            inputTextView.addSubview(openingLabel)
            inputTextView.addSubview(closingLabel)

            UIView.animateWithDuration(0.4, delay: 0, usingSpringWithDamping: 0.7, initialSpringVelocity: 0.8, options: nil, animations: {
                openingLabel.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1.25, 1.25)
                closingLabel.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1.25, 1.25)

                }, nil)

            UIView.animateWithDuration(0.4, delay: 0.2, usingSpringWithDamping: 0.7, initialSpringVelocity: 0.8, options: nil, animations: {
                openingLabel.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1.0, 1.0)
                closingLabel.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1.0, 1.0)

                }, nil)
            UIView.animateWithDuration(0.25, delay: 0.4, options: nil, animations: {
                openingLabel.alpha = 0
                closingLabel.alpha = 0

                }, completion: { finished in
                    openingLabel.removeFromSuperview()
                    closingLabel.removeFromSuperview()
            })

            break
        }
    }

}