UITextView link detection in iOS 7

Question

I have a UITextView which is managed via Interface Builder. As data detection I have \"Links\" checked. In iOS 6 everything is working fine and links are highli

Answer 1

You should check out NSDataDetector.

You can use this to find and deal with different data (links, phone numbers and more). Have a look on this site:

http://nshipster.com/nsdatadetector/

You can also use the dataDetectorTypes property of UITextView to set what you want to detect in code. May just be a storyboard transition problem for you.

textView.dataDetectorTypes = UIDataDetectorTypeLink;

Answer 2

While this thread is old, I didn’t see an answer that worked for me with Swift, so here goes for Swift 2.2

textView.dataDetectorTypes = UIDataDetectorTypes.Link
textView.selectable = true

Answer 3

So using a UITextView keeping it enabled, selectable, not scrollable & links detectable is not as simple as it seems. I encountered this in iOS 8. So my solution was to do something like this in viewDidLoad and then set editable property to NO when textBox editing is done(usually would be a method like doneIsTapped). The trick here is to set editable property to NO after setting text value to textview is completed. This will enable links in the UITextview.

- (void)viewDidLoad 
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    self.txtViewComment.editable = YES;
    self.txtViewComment.selectable = YES;
    self.txtViewComment.dataDetectorTypes = UIDataDetectorTypeLink;
    self.txtViewComment.scrollEnabled = NO;
}

and

- (IBAction)doneIsTapped:(id)sender 
{
    self.txtViewComment.text = @"set text what ever you want";
    self.txtViewComment.editable = NO; 
}

this made the links enabled in textview. Also I would recommend not to use story board at this time(or until apple fixes this problem) and just use code to avoid any unnecessary confusion. Hope this help.

Answer 4

Check These Lines must be added to use data detector property of textview in UItableView cell.

    txtvwMsgText.userInteractionEnabled = YES;
    txtvwMsgText.dataDetectorTypes = UIDataDetectorTypeLink;
    txtvwMsgText.scrollEnabled = NO;
    txtvwMsgText.editable = NO;
    txtvwMsgText.selectable = YES;

Answer 5

This workaround works for me:

textView.selectable = YES;
textView.delegate = self;

- (void) textViewDidChangeSelection:(UITextView *)textView;
{
    NSRange range = NSMakeRange(NSNotFound, 0.0);
    if ( range.length && !NSEqualRanges(range, textView.selectedRange) ) {
        textView.selectedRange = range;
    }
}

Answer 6

It seems that in iOS 7 link detection only works if the UITextView is selectable. So making my UITextView not selectable stopped the the link detection from working.

I also tested this in iOS 6 and I can confirm that in iOS 6 the link detection works fine even with the UITextView not being selectable.